Simon in Capital

tracking M&A, deal flow, and what's moving capital. full time in accounting

[Simon in Capital @sim_hes]

@TheLongInvest the last line is the part nobody wants to hear. part-time trading against algorithms running 24/7 and institutions with billion dollar research budgets is not a fair fight.

invest or trade. pick one. the people who fail are the ones pretending the middle ground exists

[Simon in Capital @sim_hes]

crypto spent a decade looking for a killer use case. turns out the killer use case was AI agents that didn't exist when crypto was invented. agents can't open bank accounts or wait three days for a wire. they need instant programmable money. franklin templeton, google, amazon, and samsung all moving in the same week is the confirmation most people will only recognize in hindsight

[Simon in Capital @sim_hes]

the scariest corrections are the ones that don't show up in the index. the s&p being flat while individual names are getting destroyed underneath is how the market hides the damage.

by the time the index catches down to what's already happened beneath the surface, the move is already halfway done. keeping cash and sizing small isn't bearish, it's surviving long enough to buy the real bottom when it finally shows up in the headline number

[Simon in Capital @sim_hes]

the fed meeting tomorrow is the first one in five years where the market genuinely doesn't know the outcome. 30/70 split instead of the usual 99% consensus. warsh killed forward guidance so there's no roadmap.

the decision matters but the press conference matters more. every word gets traded when there's nothing else to anchor to

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

Tomorrow is going to be a historic day.

Market expectations for tomorrow's Fed decision are among the most divided in recent history.

Currently, interest rate futures imply a ~30% chance of a rate hike and a ~70% chance of rates remaining unchanged.

By comparison, nearly every Fed meeting since March 2020 has entered decision day with ~99% consensus.

Adding to the uncertainty, Fed Chair Warsh has effectively eliminated forward guidance, leaving markets with little direction ahead of the announcement.

That said, we continue to believe that the Fed will NOT hike interest rates tomorrow.

It's important to not forget that just months ago, President Trump said a "pre-condition" for his next Fed Chair was a willingness to cut rates.

And, the Iran War energy shock is likely to continue being labeled as a "temporary inflationary event" rather than a structural one, the labor market is weak, and Americans are already struggling with high interest rates.

We think the Fed PAUSE continues tomorrow.

[Simon in Capital @sim_hes]

30% chance of a hike vs 70% hold is the most divided the market has been going into a fed meeting in five years. but hiking into a weakening labor market to fight an oil shock caused by a war the president started would be the worst policy error since 2006. they hold. the press conference is where the real volatility lives

[Simon in Capital @sim_hes]

"the AI trade is over" has been said at every pullback since 2023 and has been wrong every single time. the technology being "the same to 99% of people" was also true of the internet in 1998. most people used it for email. the infrastructure buildout still created trillion dollar companies.

[Simon in Capital @sim_hes]

the most dangerous assumption in markets right now is "they won't let it crash." they didn't let it crash in 2008 either. it crashed anyway because some things are bigger than policy. the president doesn't control yields, oil, earnings, or the bond market. and those are the things that actually determine direction. the red flags are there. the preparation window is open. it won't stay open forever

[Simon in Capital @sim_hes]

the market survived a war, $90 oil, 5% yields, and tariffs on three continents

the first two-week losing streak since march wasn't caused by any of them. it was caused by investors asking one question about AI capex: what's the return

big tech borrowed $200B+ this year to build data centers. the market can absorb geopolitical risk. it can't absorb the possibility that the single trade holding up the entire index might not pay off fast enough

the rally survived bombs. it might not survive a CFO saying "returns will take longer than expected." capex built the rally. capex might end it

[Simon in Capital @sim_hes]

the best time to be bullish is when it still feels uncomfortable saying it. ETH has been the most hated major asset for two years. the people who stuck around through the hate are the same ones who rode it to the top last cycle. round two hits different when the conviction was tested at the bottom, not built at the top

[Simon in Capital @sim_hes]

"barely outperforming SPY" after the biggest momentum selloff in recorded history is still outperforming SPY. the benchmark doesn't care how it felt getting there. the people who held concentrated momentum names through this and are still above the index have nothing to be ashamed of. the frustration is real but the perspective matters more right now

[Simon in Capital @sim_hes]

the hardest thing in markets is admitting you missed it. the second hardest is not chasing it anyway. the people getting wiped out on stocks up 50x didn't have a bad thesis, they had bad timing and refused to accept it. deleting the ticker and waiting for the next setup requires an ego most traders haven't developed yet

[Simon in Capital @sim_hes]

the gamification of trading is the most dangerous thing that happened to retail investors. confetti animations on trades, reddit threads treating 100% losses as content, loss porn getting more engagement than gains. somewhere along the way losing your life savings became entertainment and nobody stopped to ask if that was okay

[Simon in Capital @sim_hes]

this chart is the entire argument for owning assets instead of holding cash in one image. money supply doubles, your savings buy half as much. the people who converted cash into stocks, real estate, or gold kept pace. the people who saved in a bank account got diluted by design. the system rewards debtors and punishes savers. it always has. this is just the receipt

[Simon in Capital @sim_hes]

"biggest momentum drawdown in history" is the context that makes everything make sense. people blaming themselves for individual positions when the entire factor unwound historically. your stock didn't fail, the regime shifted. surviving it with +160% YTD and the self-awareness to name the exact mistakes publicly is worth more than any winning trade screenshot

[Simon in Capital @sim_hes]

@SRxTrades the people who supported you when you had nothing are the first investment you should make when you have something. most people get money and upgrade their circle. the real ones get money and upgrade the lives of the circle that was already there

[Simon in Capital @sim_hes]

summer is where the market filters out the people who don't belong. the ones who survive the boredom and the fake breakdowns with their capital intact are the ones positioned to profit from whatever september brings. the ones forcing trades right now won't have enough left to matter when the real move comes

[Simon in Capital @sim_hes]

@Truecrypto the scariest part about distraction is the math. two hours a day of mindless scrolling is 730 hours a year. that's 30 full days. a month of your life gone every year to content you won't remember by tomorrow. the cost is invisible because it's paid in minutes not dollars

[Simon in Capital @sim_hes]

the memory bulls who said the oligopoly was an unbreakable moat just met the $85 billion state-backed exception. CXMT doesn't need to make a profit, it needs to make enough chips to break the pricing power of the three companies that controlled 90% of the market. cheaper memory is great for consumers and AI adoption. terrible for anyone long the memory trade at these multiples

[Simon in Capital @sim_hes]

90% of trading is sitting still. the other 10% is executing the plan you made while sitting still. the problem is most people can't handle the 90% and fill it with trades that exist only because doing nothing felt unproductive. the best trade you'll make this week is the one you didn't take

[Simon in Capital @sim_hes]

gold is supposed to struggle when real yields are high. it's not struggling. it's holding $4,000 and consolidating. that means the market is pricing in something beyond yields. debt spiral, dollar debasement, structural inflation. whatever it is, gold already knows. the price is telling you the yields are coming down whether the fed wants them to or not