Robert W Travis

[Milton Friedman Daily @MiltonFriedmanW]

Milton Friedman on 4 ways to spend money:

1) Your money on yourself (you’re careful about both cost and quality)
2) Your money on others (you care about cost, less about quality)
3) Someone else’s money on yourself (you care about quality, not cost)
4) Someone else’s money on others (you care about neither)

The last one is how government spending works.

[Darius Dale @DariusDale42]

If I’ve told you once that "at all times my entire liquid net worth reflects the KISS Model Portfolio™️ allocations," I’ve told you two million times. For those who can't quite seem to grasp this basic concept, allow me to repeat it:

WE DO NOT INVEST ON THE BASIS OF MY FUNDAMENTAL RESEARCH VIEWS AT @42Macro. WHY? BECAUSE OUR SYSTEMATIC RISK MANAGEMENT OVERLAYS PRODUCE VASTLY SUPERIOR RESULTS.

KISS: https://t.co/96Ja26h0Oa

Dr. Mo: https://t.co/SgVWLv6nXZ

Testimonials: https://t.co/HGuDSdvpD4

I know it can be mind-blowing to a retail investor that someone’s portfolio can reflect quantitative risk management signals, not their tactical or strategic fundamental beliefs, but there are trillions in AUM on global Wall Street (where I work) that operate like this daily.

We built @42Macro so that Main Street investors can get in on the positively-skewed-return-distributions-allow-investors-to-compound-wealth-from-a-high-NAV-and-grow-their-AUM-much-faster game too.

When you're ready: https://t.co/ZvfkolS4BC. 💜

[Rand Paul @RandPaul]

And what causes inflation? Government deficit spending. That “free” stuff the Left is after is anything but free.

[Darius Dale @DariusDale42]

MUST READ of the week—perhaps year: https://t.co/vZTAFfOL76. Our friend @tomkeene likely agrees. 

If you are too busy to learn but apparently not too busy to peruse social media, then TLDR this section: “Structural reforms can limit avoidance and expand revenue potential.”

This piece is among the first shots across the bow from a Wall-Street-adjacent think tank that is highly supportive of our thesis that a historic secular bear market is coming. 

A key reason why we have strong conviction that a jump condition in redistributive policies and trust busting is coming much sooner than the median investor realizes is our data-driven, robustly researched application of the @RayDalio, @HoweGeneration, and @Peter_Turchin frameworks.

Mind you, this is the same median investor who is historically allocated to stocks relative to other asset classes and historically allocated to Tech stocks relative to other factors. When it’s time to sell, there will be no one to offload the risk to. 

Our current base case on when is 2H27-1H28. We believe the 2028 election will be different this time. The result will likely be manifestly pro-human and pro-labor—regardless of which party wins because that is what it will likely take to win henceforth.

Bold prediction: Many current members of DSA and MAGA will merge into one unified voting bloc by 2032—especially if POTUS is not around by then (he's ~80 years old).

Once people in the W-2 class realize they’ve been getting screwed by politicians on BOTH sides of the aisle for decades, the key political fight won’t be Republican vs. Democrat anymore. It’ll go back to where it all started: capital vs. labor. 

Please prepare your portfolio for the Fourth Turning climax before it ruins your hopes and dreams of an on-time and comfortable retirement. 

With love,
—Skipper

[Milton Friedman Daily @MiltonFriedmanW]

Milton Friedman on government subsidies for colleges:

“We impose taxes on everybody, including those who don’t go to college, in order to subsidize people who do go to college.”

“There’s no social program which is so clearly a case of imposing taxes on low income groups to benefit high income groups as government subsidy to higher education.”

[Milton Friedman Daily @MiltonFriedmanW]

“Higher taxes will not reduce the deficit, except for a brief interval. They will simply increase government spending. That is the lesson taught by past experiences.”

— Milton Friedman

[Barchart @Barchart]

Lumber falls to lowest price in 2 years 📉 🏡

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

Oil flows in the Strait of Hormuz have sharply rebounded:

Persian Gulf crude oil exports surpassed 14 million barrels per day last week for the first time since the Iran War began on February 28th.

This marks an over +210% increase from the ~4.5 million barrels per day low seen in March.

As a result, the 4-week average is up to 14 million barrels per day, the highest level in 6 months.

Persian Gulf crude oil exports have now recovered to ~80% of their pre-war levels.

This comes as the US military has increasingly secured the Strait of Hormuz and established a two-way shipping corridor along the coast of Oman, allowing oil convoys to resume through the waterway.

Meanwhile, refined fuel shipments, including gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, remain at only around 50% of pre-war levels, as these products are more expensive to transport than crude oil and some refineries in the Persian Gulf that were damaged during the early stages of the war have also yet to fully resume operations.

Oil flows are coming back, but the fuel market is still under intense pressure.

[Darius Dale @DariusDale42]

Every time I update this chart with fresh data, my heart breaks a little more. 💔

The neo-feudalists are winning.

They don't have to keep winning. They will lose whenever We the People ditch the partisan tribalism and collectively rise up against the tyranny of The Privileged Few.

FWIW, we've done this twice already in this country. Score: We the People 2, The Privileged Few 0.

Let's improve to 3-0 in this Fourth Turning!

Jesus Christ and I love you,
—Skipper ❤️+🩶+💙=💜

[Rand Paul @RandPaul]

One particular quote comes to mind:

“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help.”

-Ronald Reagan

[David Sacks @DavidSacks]

Dario has written that we need to “pace the frontier,” and Sam has agreed. People may be surprised by my response: go ahead.

You guys are the frontier. By any reasonable metric — market share, revenue growth, model capability — the two of you have a duopoly on frontier intelligence. You’ve also claimed the lead is widening because of recursive self-improvement.

I don’t see what you see in the lab. If the unreleased models are scary enough that you think you should slow down, I support your decision to be responsible.

But stop pretending you need anyone else’s permission. Stop pretending antitrust law has to be suspended so you can form a cartel. Stop pretending you need a regulatory approval process that supersedes product liability. Stop pretending METR is independent when it is intertwined with Anthropic’s investors and staff. Stop pretending you need those same evaluators to police competitors who aren’t even at the frontier.

Most of all, stop pretending the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic. You face massive product-liability exposure if your products enable a truly damaging cyberattack. The market already punishes models that behave in unpredictable or unauthorized ways. After the Hugging Face episode, it is simply good business for OpenAI and Anthropic to trade some raw power for reliability and predictability. Call it alignment if you want. It is also just giving customers what they want.

Pacing the frontier would also create breathing room for a more intelligent conversation about regulation than Bernie Sanders’ “shut it all down.” China is very unlikely to join a global agreement, as you know, and that has to be taken into account as well.

So go ahead and pace the frontier. You are the ones setting it. The easiest way not to build superintelligence is for you to agree not to build it. Demanding your preferred regulatory framework as the price of that will look like blackmail of the public and the political system. So just do it.

If you do, you’ll buy goodwill for the next conversation. If you don’t, we’ll know this was just another bid for regulatory capture — or an election-season psyop.

[Rand Paul @RandPaul]

I couldn’t agree more.

[Barchart @Barchart]

JUST IN 🚨: Bank of Japan intervening to save the Yen again

[Barchart @Barchart]

Crypto saw an inflow of $3.2 Billion last week, the largest since October 2025 📈 📈

[Laura Ingraham @IngrahamAngle]

Broooootal by Bessent.

Poor Liz. Ignorant media.

[Darius Dale @DariusDale42]

CONNECT THE DOTS:

1. Party leadership flips in the House. @SecScottBessent's use of the TGA to counter Treasury bond market disequilibrium is greatly diminished.

2. Fearing this outcome, Bessent instructs a lame-duck Congress to revalue the Treasury’s gold, inflating the TGA by ~$1.2tn (at current gold prices) in the process.

3. In order to counter inflation risks, the @federalreserve will obviously seek to sterilize the eventual increase in bank reserves caused by spending down the increased TGA balance, but sterilization is an imperfect science. There will be some leakage in the form of higher bank reserves because policymakers will seek to avoid breaching LCLoR—the lowest comfortable level of reserves. This will not be the only activity transpiring in the global funding market.

4. The resulting asset price inflation triggers sticky and/or increasing consumer price inflation via an acceleration in the already historically large Cantillon effect. The nationwide affordability crisis deepens.

5. MAGA and DSA—both feeling immense socioeconomic pressure from labor's rapidly declining share of national income—merge into one unified voting bloc.

6. Substantial redistributive policies (e.g., more taxation of the rich; more spending on the poor) are proposed, legislated, and eventually adopted, triggering secular bear markets in both stocks and bonds.

7. Some states (e.g., TX and FL) may nullify the remedies and even threaten or attempt secession if the penalties for us in the K-1 class are harsh enough.

8. The Fed steps in to defend the system with aggressively dovish monetary policy.

9. Repeat steps #4–8, then skip to #10.

10. Fearing revolution by MAGADSA, a.k.a. "The Revenge of the W-2s," U.S. political and corporate elites identify an enemy abroad whose defeat in military combat would serve both their political and economic interests.

Voilà, the final act of Paradigm E.

Our global investor community will be waiting for you at the finish line. And I say that with the humility that only a data-driven, robust research process can provide. This is NOT the only scenario. It's merely the highest-probability scenario according to our math.

With love and gratitude for not thinking I'm "crazy." FWIW, some people thought I was crazy for replacing all the Treasury bond exposure in our flagship KISS Model Portfolio with Gold years ago.

Jesus Christ and I love you,
—Skipper ❤️+🤍+💙=💜

[Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance @MassFiscal]

Well, that’s pretty clear. 👀

Mayor Michelle Wu was asked whether Prop 2½ should be repealed or changed.

Her answer: “Yes, it needs to be.”

When the conversation turned to giving Boston more power to tax, Wu noted that other cities already have that setup and added that the “City of Boston would gladly do that.”

For more than four decades, Prop 2½ has served as an important check on property tax increases and required local officials to go directly to voters when they want to exceed its limits.

At a time when Massachusetts is already struggling with affordability, weakening one of the strongest protections taxpayers have against rapidly rising property taxes should be a nonstarter.

[Geiger Capital @Geiger_Capital]

Holy shit.

Since Trump took office, 1.3 Million foreign-born workers (legal and illegal) have lost a job. Meanwhile, 1.7 Million native-born Americans have gained a job.

A sharp reversal of the last few years.

[RNC Research @RNCResearch]

Abdul El-Sayed doubles down on refusing to renounce Hasan Piker — who said "America deserved 9/11."

CNN: Do you have any plans to renounce Hasan Piker?

EL-SAYED: "I’m less focused on folks who are campaigning with me and more focused on the folks I’m campaigning to.”