I found a Trump rally from 2016 in my archives and decided to compare it to his speech from the G7 from last week. The differences are stark. He has declined rapidly in the past ten years. The older speech in in black and white for contrast.
Dude Obama was whatever but it’s crazy to hear him speak and then hear trump speak. It’s seriously insane. One guy sounds like a president (like how they sounded when I was a kid) and then the fat orange sack of shit sounds like an escapee from fucking Bellevue w a mouth full of shit & sand
@SenatorLankford T got a worse deal than what was on the table !! Worse negotiator ever!
You could have kept your silence and saved face, yet here you are…..
NEWS: Judge REJECTS last minute attempt to keep Trump’s name on the Kennedy Center. The name is expected to be torn down in the coming hours. Watch our live feed at the link in reply.
here's the full clip of Rep. Emilia Sykes's brilliant line of questioning that made Chris Wright squirm by confronting him with the completely unhinged comments Trump just made in the Oval Office about inflation and the war in Iran
I was 26 years old when Peter Lynch handed me this.
April 28, 1983. I was the auto and retail analyst at Fidelity.
Peter was in his prime, on his way to building the greatest mutual fund track record in history:
29.2% annual returns for 13 YEARS STRAIGHT, growing Magellan from $18 million to $14 billion. The Babe Ruth of investing.
I'm looking at the principles he had typed up on a single sheet of paper that I've kept in my files for 42 years and I believe now is the perfect time to revisit them again.
Let me walk you through a few:
Rule 1B: "You need an edge to make money. Do not rely on a combination of hope and good luck."
Today's retail investor has no edge. He has Reddit, Robinhood, zero-DTE options and a TikTok algorithm pushing him into whatever stock just ripped 200% the day before.
That's hope and good luck wearing a fancy costume.
Rule 1E: "Purchase stocks like one would purchase a business."
Tesla trades at over 360 times earnings on a business deteriorating in real time, Oracle has $206 billion in liabilities against $39 billion in equity, MicroStrategy is a leveraged Bitcoin holding company priced like a software firm, and don't even get me started on SpaceX, that piece of garbage you'll be able to trade tomorrow...
Nobody in their right mind would buy these as actual businesses. They buy them as stories, narratives, and lottery tickets.
Peter would have called it the same way I do - these are not investments. They are speculations. GAMBLING.
Rule 1G: "Study the balance sheet and cash flow statement."
The hyperscalers spent over $380 billion on AI capex in 2025. Goldman says the measurable productivity payoff does not arrive until 2027 at the earliest.
Oracle just reported NEGATIVE $23.7 billion in free cash flow for fiscal 2026 while borrowing at a pace that would make a leveraged buyout firm nervous. The cash flow statements are screaming but nobody is reading them.
Rule 1I: "Avoid the long shot."
This one cuts the deepest.
The entire market has become a long shot.
OpenAI is projected to post roughly $74 billion in operating losses in 2028 ALONE while priced for transformation tomorrow. Bitcoin treasury companies are multiplying off thin air.
The retail investor of 2026 is making one long-shot bet after another and calling it a portfolio.
Rule 3A: "When the fundamentals change, sell your mistakes."
Tesla's fundamentals have changed.
California registrations are down 24% year over year and inventory days went from 10 to 27. Musk himself admitted on the last earnings call that Hardware 3 cannot achieve unsupervised FSD, breaking a promise made to 4 million customers.
The fundamentals have screamed change. But the stock is still at $385.
The mistakes are not being sold. They are literally being doubled down on with leverage.
Rule 3I: "A 30-50% profit in 12 months is great. Mediocre in three years."
Today's retail crowd expects 30-50% in a WEEK. Then they wonder why they get wiped out the second the hype stops.
And my favorite - Rule 3J: "Develop your own style and stick to it."
That is the entire game right there.
I developed mine sitting across the hall from Peter Lynch in 1983, watching him work, reading his notes, getting my own research handed back to me covered in his pencil marks. Then in 1984, my first full year managing money, I ran the #1 mutual fund in America. The Fidelity Overseas Fund was top 2 for the next six years running.
I did not get there by chasing narratives. I got there by following the sheet of paper you are looking at right now.
42 years later, this single page contains more wisdom than every Fintwit thread, CNBC segment, and Wall Street price target combined.
Peter retired in 1990 with the greatest mutual fund record in history. Then he sat down and wrote books explaining exactly how he did it.
Only a few "investors" these days read them.
And almost nobody is reading the balance sheets, the cash flow statements, or studying actual businesses today either.
They are chasing AI, crypto, and whatever pumped yesterday.
The wisdom on this page is timeless and it's more important than ever.
@FurkanGozukara so 108 less than ....
U.S. president Donald Trump pressured Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to "find 11,780 votes" and overturn the U.S. election results from the 2020 presidential election.
This is an excellent video on the AI IPO scam that’s about to go down.
A great question that’s brought up in this is how can you IPO companies that the government is looking at taking stakes in?
The sad part is this is exactly how it’s going to play out.
@NoFilterSkin I have a Scentify and use Vinevide Scent #1001 inspired by Ritz Carlton Hotel. My house smells soooo good. A friend uses this and I loved the smell of her house. The oil is pricey but lasts forever!
@NoFilterSkin Idk if you’ve ever stayed at a Westin hotel but they have their own signature scent that smells insanely good and they sell it online. I have the candle and the reed diffuser and I’m obsessed.
https://t.co/fLlVXwDWtE
Trump now finds himself in an entirely new situation with the War in Iran.
He doesn't hold the cards. He has no notable leverage. And he can't simply declare bankruptcy for the seventh time and move on.
And it shows.
Donald Trump is not a statesman. He is not a diplomat. And I think, in many ways, this is what endeared him initially to many of his voters. He was businessman that accumulated billions of dollars of personal wealth through casino's, real estate, television, golf courses, and a multitude of endeavors.
You can say what you will, but at the end of the day, you don't accrue a net worth well beyond a billion, or even hundreds of millions of dollars, without being "successful", so let's put that partisan argument to the side for now.
But all throughout Trump's life, he's held the upper hand. He grew up wealthy. He received significant financial assistance from his father. And he had an effectively unlimited financial safety net in the event of failure. These are not points meant to be political hits, nor are they able to be refuted. They are simply the facts. Reality.
As a result, Donald Trump always had the leverage. He was a trust fund baby. Again, this is simply the truth. It is reported that Fred Trump left his children around a billion dollars when he passed away in 1999. Trust me, if you know beyond a shadow of a doubt you are set for life regardless, you live life differently.
What this means is that Donald Trump, throughout his business career which WAS hyper-successful, never HAD to succeed. He could also walk away if a deal was not in his favor. He, by definition, always held the cards. Generational wealth.
And don't get me wrong, President Trump was savvy in his exploitation of this reality. You'd be a fool to enter a deal you didn't think was highly beneficial to you if you didn't have to make a gamble. That'd be stupid.
In every transaction, every business dealing, it was either in his favor, or he walked.
Because. He. Could.
And when business endeavors failed to pan out? Bankruptcy could be declared. Again, save me the partisan takes, Donald Trump declared bankruptcies on his businesses six times. And he was RIGHT to do so. That's the correct financial decision... but it's an off-ramp. A quick fix.
These same realities - holding all the cards, being able to walk away, having a legal escape valve - do not exist in the quagmire he finds himself in with the Iran War.
The reality facing Donald Trump is one that he has never had to navigate before. Iran does not care that he is wealthy. It's irrelevant. Trump can't simply walk away because Iran would retain control of the Strait of Hormuz and it would destroy Trump's legacy. There is no emergency "bankruptcy-equivalent" escape valve here.
Now, Donald Trump has to sit on the other side of the table at a time when the stakes are the highest they have ever been in his entire life. No training wheels. No safety net. Trump's been thrown right into the deep end with perhaps the most savvy negotiators in the world.
President Trump holds effectively zero leverage with Iran.
There is not a modicum of domestic American support for this war. It was never sold to the American people. Many see this as Israel's war that is not "putting America first". The goals and objectives have changed by the day. For this reason, alongside the unlikely chance of success in the first place, a large-scale ground invasion is not a serious suggestion being put for by anyone with an above room temperature IQ.
Iran holds insurmountable "escalation dominance". If the United States targets Iran's energy infrastructure? Iran will retaliate massively across the Gulf. GCC countries have already made it abundantly clear to Trump that they fear Iran. That they don't trust the US-bought military equipment to protect their infrastructure or civilians. Iran can cut undersea cables. Iran could close the Bab al-Mandeb Strait and further cripple maritime shipping. Anything the US can do to hurt Iran, Iran can do tenfold to hurt the global economy.
Reopen the Strait of Hormuz by force? We tried that under Operation Freedom, and it was so ridiculous and stupid that it was canceled within 48 hours. Some are suggesting we try again, but seem to entirely misunderstand reality (as they have throughout the entire conflict). What? Is the United States supposed to effectively occupy the Strait of Hormuz until the end of time? How many vessels per day would be able to navigate the Strait of Hormuz with US naval escorts? What would the costs of this be? Can we adequately protect our sailors? Why wouldn't Iran, again, utilize their escalation dominance and shut down the Bab al-Mandeb or strike Gulf infrastructure? It. Doesn't Work.
The unfortunate reality is that President Trump holds no cards. He has no meaningful leverage. His ONLY option is making concessions at the negotiating table...
Is this something Trump is even capable of navigating in the first place though? A President, one who has made perhaps the gravest mistake in the history of American foreign policy, one who has never experienced these constraints before, one who has a litany of allies ready to turn their backs on him the second he capitulates... A man who's entire legacy will not be, "Trump the Businessman", nor will it be "Trump the President". It will eternally become, "Trump the Failure".
But it's his only choice. The Iran Hawks and Israeli Lobby that surrounds him, and they do, are prepared to claw him to shreds on Fox News and Newsmax. We saw this exact situation play out just this past weekend when initial terms of a potential Memorandum of Understanding was leaked. His so called "allies" in the United States turned their back on him immediately, leaving him with almost nobody remaining. Not after the Epstein Files. Not after this Iran War debacle.
Donald Trump now finds himself in an entirely unfamiliar situation. He doesn't hold the cards. He has no escape valve. And there is no realistic scenario where he can credibly claim victory... The only path forward is the one that will permanently destroy his legacy.
But it's the only way to end this war.