Deja Vu All Over
Red Candle Weekends, Ivermectin & Wuhan Redux
There's an old saying on Wall Street, "Once you have the market's keys, they change the locks."
In lay terms, this means that once you've figured out a pattern or easy way to make money, the market changes. Either others come along copycatting the trade thus depressing margins and eliminating the opportunity, or things just shift.
Markets are dynamic, and nobody prints money for free long term (with the possible exception of Renaissance).
I first noticed a pattern on bitcoin and the broader crypto markets a few weeks ago. Weekends were usually a time of profit taking, with the last two weekends being especially severe courtesy of regulatory FUD, China-FUD, Elon idiocy, and ESG-climate fear mongering.
My thesis for weekend selloffs are simple - banks are closed on weekends (yes, in the age of 24/7 everything (News, tv, wifi, access), the majority of the TradFi infrastructure is shut from Friday at 4pm until Monday morning. Institutions and retail can't buy if they aren't on the desk or don't have funds in their account. Last weekend I had some spare change available to deploy, but certainly not deep liquidity. This weekend I changed that by adding funds on Thursday in case we saw another huge gap down towards last week's lows (or even through).
And because I and others have started to pick up on this pattern, the market predictably sold off today. After all, who wants to be balls to the wall long Friday if we're going to have another nasty weekend selloff.
It reminds me of the days trading the Global War on Terror (GWOT) back in 2001. Post 9/11, markets would sell off every time there was a rumor of a white powder envelope discovered somewhere (it was almost always just cocaine, not anthrax...).
For a period of 2 months or so after the Towers came down, every Friday would be a day of vicious selling as PM's would pare their book (sell stock they owned) in order to cut exposure. After all, another major terror attack was a given and no one wanted to be jacked long during a 2 day weekend with no ability to sell when it happened.
Friday markets would be a bloody mess, and when there was no terror attack during the weekend, Monday futures would be limit up as people piled back in. After 4 or 5 straight Fridays like this, money managers tried to front run the pattern and got jacked short Thursday for the inevitable Friday bloodshed. Why not? After all, they had the 'keys' to the market. And wouldn't you know, Mr. Market flipped the script and we had one of the biggest up Fridays that year ever crucifying the shorts. The pattern was busted just as people got used to it.
I think we'll see the same thing this or next weekend. Perhaps not this weekend as it's a 3 day holiday weekend, but certainly in the next week or two. Whenever you think markets are 'easy' and you've got it figured out, stay tuned for a nasty reversal. Humility is the only attribute that never goes out of style when it comes to trading and money management.
Volatility is inevitable in the crypto space, and this week was no exception. After suffering from a swift crypto market slide last weekend, most assets managed to bounce back slightly.
Periods of significant volatility and large corrections are a part of crypto, and they are inevitable for an asset class with such high growth potential. While the market is pulling back again today (Saturday), it still made considerable strides from the established bottom.
Once the headline volatility decreases, we’ll likely see a period of prolonged basing and sideways trading before the crypto market resumes its bull run. Fundamentals are constantly improving, and institutions will continue looking to gain exposure despite short-term headwinds from regulatory FUD and ESG nonsense.
The noise driving the price today like China and ESG are likely totally inconsequential to where the price of bitcoin is going to be in 5-10 years. The signals are a $6 Trillion budget and $200 Trillion in unfunded liabilities. The noise is whatever you see in the New York Times or on CNBC on a daily basis.
ARK's Cathy Wood expounds on this as bit here.
The $6 Trillion Dollar Dolt
With this week's “budget” proposal, Sloppy Joe is officially the $6 Trillion dollar man.
The fiscal Super Cycle is in full effect.
Whether Biden’s full $6 trillion budget proposal will pass, it almost doesn’t matter. The Overton window of politics and finance has been expanded so far that people no longer apologize when discussing MMT in polite company and Weimar scenarios are openly debated on CNBC.
Love him or hate him, Alan Greenspan would have at least balked at the numbers being tossed around both on the fiscal spending and inflationary side as a result of the idiocy and cowardice of our political leaders. Today's Deep State hacks barely blush.
$6 trillion is about 9x the size of the bailout of the 2008 financial crisis. Those old enough to recall remember Democrats and Republicans alike shrieking at the fiscal irresponsibility of that massive giveaway. Serious people were flabbergasted by the sheer size of it ($700B) and debated whether it was indeed the end of the economy, the country and the world.
It's also over 1000x bigger than the $4B Long-Term Capital Management bailout which only took place 20 years ago, and was deemed to be so outrageous and irresponsible at the time, that it would enshrine moral hazard going forward and possibly derail capitalism itself (victory lap for those sounding the alarm back then).
Frankly, it almost doesn’t matter at this point. On our current trajectory, by 2025, funded and unfunded liabilities will put every single taxpayer on the hook for over $1 Million per person.
Unfortunately, we’ve passed the point of no return – after all, no politician will choose the career risk of preaching fiscal restraint. Such was the dilemma of democracy Plato and Socrates recognized millennia ago, and more recently by other philosophers.
So, expect more Oprah Fiscal policy - more money printing, more free programs, more of everything ("You get a car, you get a college, you get an anti-racist Green Economy!"). And in exchange, all it will cost us is the end of the dollar as a reserve currency and store of value.
The Chinese government is working hard with its allies across the globe to make sure that happens regardless. We're just giving them the nitrous to ensure it happens on a faster timeline.
Carl & Ray - Crypto’s Bogie & Bacall
Meanwhile, the recent volatility in the crypto sector hasn’t scared off one particular legendary investor.
Carl Icahn is a billionaire hedge fund manager known for being a “corporate raider.” It looks like he might soon be a crypto raider.
According to Bloomberg, Icahn is interested in getting into the crypto sector in a “big way.”
Here he was on CNBC:
I mean, a big way for us would be, you know, $1 billion, $1.5 billion. I'm not going to say exactly.
The potential investment amount is not nearly as important as the fact that Icahn is interested in investing. You see, the billionaire was a crypto skeptic just a few years ago. His change-of-tune is yet another indicator of crypto’s growing acceptance and glowing future.
From Business Insider:
Icahn, who called bitcoin and other similar assets "ridiculous" three years ago, has changed his tune on cryptocurrencies. He told CNBC in 2018 that he "wouldn't touch that stuff" but that his dislike perhaps stemmed from not understanding them.
Icahn, whose net worth is estimated at $22 billion, said he hadn't bought any crypto but was exploring opportunities in the sector. He acknowledged that cryptocurrencies were gaining mainstream acceptance as a consequence of rising inflation…
He said skepticism about the value of cryptocurrencies was a "little wrong-headed," adding that the only reason the dollar, for example, is valuable is that "you can use it to pay taxes."
Add Icahn to the list of investing legends like Ray Dalio that have been converted to the church of digital, hard money.
Dalio casually remarked during a recent interview with Bloomberg, "Yeah I own some Bitcoin.” That was a stark change from 2 years ago when he dismissed it out of hand.
Ray Dalio nonchalantly admitting he owns Bitcoin ranks up there with Obama casually admitting, “Of course there’s UFOs.”
Ray Dalio is the best investor of our generation.
He’s a modern day Warren Buffet (with a much better track record in public markets).
He joins investing legends Paul Tudor, Bill Miler and Stanley Druckenmiller - all first ballot Hall of Famers to make the case for owning Bitcoin.
Dalio dropped another bomb when he said, “I’d rather own Bitcoin over bonds.”
Bonds are a $127 trillion asset class.
Gold is $11 trillion.
Bitcoin is less than a trillion.
And Bitcoin does EVERYTHING better than gold.
This is not investment advice, but studies have shown even a 1% allocation to BTC in a portfolio smooths and increases returns.
1% is nice if you’re a pension fund, but it won’t move your needle.
In an irrational world beset by endless printing and negative interest rates, a store of value like Bitcoin that can’t be inflated away or confiscated makes perfect sense.
The bigger question is, do you truly understand Bitcoin and the macro headwinds we’re facing enough to pull the trigger?
If you don’t. Reach out to me. I’m looking for a few curious people who want to learn more about financial sovereignty and alternative investing.
I’ll cover bitcoin, crypto, defi, private debt/equity, angel investing and other basic financial topics like tax deferred strategies and asset protection.
In honor of Memorial Day, I’m going to knock 45% off the monthly price and for a very limited time offer this for $99 a month instead of $179.
If you’ve reached out to me in the past month or two about wanting to learn more, this is your opportunity.
You can’t and won’t find a better time to up your Financial and Human IQ.
ESG, a More Polite and Dignified Climate Change Scam
Within a 24-hour period, three of the super-major oil companies – Exxon, Chevon, and Shell – all reported a series of boardroom or courtroom defeats that suggest a significant change in business direction is coming.
From CNBC:
In just a few hours on Wednesday, shareholders at U.S. oil giant ExxonMobil supported a tiny activist hedge fund in overhauling the company’s board, investors in U.S. energy firm Chevron defied management on a pivotal climate vote and a Dutch court ordered Royal Dutch Shell to take much more aggressive action to drive down its carbon emissions.
The confluence of events shows the growing pressure on international oil and gas companies to set short-, medium- and long-term targets that are consistent with the Paris Agreement — the climate accord widely recognized as critically important to avoid an irreversible climate crisis.
What conservatives fail to realize and capitalize on, is that Social Justice, anti-racism and ESG are all false narratives serving as political broadswords to effect societal change that Democrats have failed to effect through their own direct efforts.
They’re a backdoor to implement more control through a softer ‘greater good’ form of Marxism. The key thing to remember though, is that the Left always preaches and demands these changes, but it's only for others. Never for them. Whether it’s private planes or private schools, the rules are always for thee, never for me.
Case in point, virtue signaling Hollywood and the Music Industry were quick to put up the black square and black fist, but let’s talk about their board composition or ownership structures. Changing your profile photo for a day is obviously a lot cheaper (and emptier) than actually doing anything meaningful or substantive.
I saw this poster on Instagram and while it was hard to tell (as many things are these days) whether it was parody, a genuine movement or just conservative trolling, the right should put its weight behind this.
Rather than just turning their head in disgust and attempting to defend their own borders against these neo-racist grifters, Conservatives should lean in and put pressure on the progressive multinational corporations and Leftist mills like Hollywood and academia to live up to the crap they spew. If you really believe in BLM (the group, not the slogan), that white supremacy is rampant and responsible for all the world’s ills, then there's a simple solution. Give up your seat to a minority candidate. Give up your board seat, give up your C-suite corner office and give your cap table seat in your record label, your Hollywood studio, your investment bank boardroom and your MLB, NFL, NBA GM/owner's suites).
If you're going to talk the talk, the least they can do is walk it as well. And conservatives and libertarians should be right there besides them helping push these hypocrites and grifting parasites off the cliff.
Journalists < Tobacco Executives
“I believe virtually everything I read, and I think that is what makes me more of a selective human than someone who doesn't believe anything.” - David St. Hubbins
The rank incompetence and deliberate disinformation from the Fourth Estate has any intelligent, rational person adopting the inverse approach of the Spinal Tap lead singer quoted above. Sentient beings should believe virtually nothing they read or hear from the mainstream media without conducting their own due diligence first.
This starting point is the inverse of where we were 40 years ago, where we would assume talking heads and newspaper writers were telling the truth absent hard core evidence to the opposite (and if it arose, there would be jobs lost and apologies all around).
Has any professions fallen more in the last two decades than journalists and the media? They rank right up there with tobacco executives from a reputation and trust standpoint. At least the boys from Philip Morris got paid handsomely to peddle their bullshit and poison.
Today, the only sane approach after watching them openly and deliberately lie about story after story (Russia Collusion, Jussie Smollett, Jeffrey Epstein, Mueller Report, Steele Dossier, Covington High, ‘Mostly Peaceful’ Riots, Lockdowns, Masking and the Capital ‘Insurrection’ Riot) and nearly every other relevant event is to assume they are 100% wrong or lying, and do your own research to confirm or reverse that starting opinion.
The Wuhan lab leak theory is a perfect example.
In February of last year, before 99% of the US has even heard of Covid, I posited that the source of the virus was either an accidental or intentional leak from the Wuhan lab where Gain of Function experiments (some funded by Fauci and the US) were actively being conducted. Occam’s Razor and common sense both made a nearly infallible argument that the sudden outbreak of a new and mutated virus at the same exact location as China’s only Level 4 Pathogen experimentation facility was likely NOT a coincidence.
The mere mention of that theory got me and others a ‘time out’ on Facebook and ‘fact-check false’ warnings from the technocracy on other social media channels. The scientific and political establishment circled the wagons to conclusively declare the theory absolutely impossible, racist, absurd and just a crazy conspiracy theory!
Fast forward 14 months and we're seeing the narrative change. Epidemiologists, intelligence agencies, and many of the same media watchdogs who screamed down the crazies for 14 months now are switching their stance and admitting it’s a possible, and maybe even probable theory (see the first 3 articles in ‘What I’m Reading’ below).
The question is, why and who benefits by this radical change? They could easily have kept the censorship and lie going that it came from a mystical, magical bat. Reminiscent of heyday Soviet Union and the Pravda brigade, in America today one party controls all the relevant public media assets so if they wanted to keep quashing the story they could.
So why the change? To ratchet up the pressure on China now that any domestic political opponents have been crushed?
Why is Bill Gates now on the outs? This POS has been a depopulation and Georgia Guidestones lunatic for years yet he became a media celebrity for working tirelessly to spread the establishment lockdown and vaccination propaganda.
What about the other media fabricated celebrity fraud? Fauci has either been wrong about everything - literally, everything - or has lied about everything. That has now become obvious to even his most ardent supporters. The only question remaining is if he is going to be ousted for being incompetent, or exposed for being a criminal.
Covid (or better yet the media/political reaction to Covid) accomplished the mission of removing Trump from power and installing the biggest shift in power to giant corporations and single-party government rule ever. Half the population were psychologically broken and willingly complied in short order with narratives that were false and exaggerated to any rational skeptic. If citizens were eager and willing to kill their own businesses, wear masks and inject children with an experimental 'vaccine' despite the fact that children aren't vulnerable to Covid (flu is 100x more dangerous), all for a virus with a 99.98% survival rate, imagine what they'll be willing to do when they ‘accidentally’ unleash the next one?
In analyzing news events like this, or investing or anything that requires you to assimilate and synthesize new information, we have to get better as a society at sensemaking. This is a complex topic in itself, and one that bears study.
For those unaware, FB can and will dictate political currents and your world view merely by tailoring an algorithm. If you're unsympathetic to BLM or George Floyd, they can show you constant videos or news about black men assaulting Asians. If you're sympathetic to the viewpoint that police are an abusive occupying force that needs to be reformed, defunded or dismantled, they can show you videos all day long of cops assaulting black men to reaffirm and cement that viewpoint.
The point is, you may not even know it's occurring and that you're being conditioned to reaffirm a viewpoint without question. And anecdotal or charged emotional videos can give you a false sense of the objective reality on the ground. Ask a millennial how many unarmed black men or women are shot each year. I'd bet the farm they'll give an answer that is anywhere from 100-1000x the actual number.
That's not to minimize the situation. Even one is too many, and cops have gotten away with being above the law for far too long and police departments are in need of reform. The point is that statistically, it's not likely.
Similar propaganda was done last year over the Plandemic. We were shown videos (many that were replayed from SARS or past breakouts) of overcrowded hospitals, refrigeration trucks and tents set up to be used as makeshift morgues and for battlefield triage.
With the exception of a few NY hospitals for a very brief time period, you were more likely to find nurses shooting Tik Tok videos than overwhelmed with people dying in hallways. But the news ran with the false narrative to spread fear and keep the citizen-subjects under control and compliant.
Sensemaking is a sorely needed, misunderstood, and underutilized skillset that is in dire need of studying to counter the incompetence and deliberate disinformation of media and journalists that seems to be the norm these days.
What is sensemaking? At its simplest, it's an analytical process that takes us from "from information foraging, harvesting and marshalling into understanding."
It involves the ability to accurately recognize where one is in the informational landscape to mitigate internal and external biases, and to detach to improve our capacity for accurate analysis and problem-solving.
In order to unpack and get to the point, it's important to confront news or narrative with some simple questions.
This can be a very long and analytical exercise but here's the most simple and direct route to decipher the objective truth of a situation. Ask yourself:
1. Who benefits financially from the narrative? By far this is the most important question. We live in a consumerist, capitalistic society and money is still the ultimate metric of motive and value (helpful in many ways, unhelpful and suboptimal in many more). CDC and WHO are mostly controlled by Big Pharma (and China in the WHO's case).
When you know that, it’s easier to understand why Ivermectin and HcQ were dismissed as treatments out of hand and gaslit despite a half century of efficacy in similar situations. At less than $1 a pill and easily manufactured, you're taking hundreds of billions if not trillions in future revenue off the table for Big Pharma companies and for grand social experiments (like $6T in 'infrastructure' doled out to wealthy 'partners' (or co-conspirators as I like to refer to them)).
Here's an article on Ivermectin. At ten cents a dose and readily available, it could have saved 80% or more of even the obviously inflated 'Covid death' counts.
"In the professor’s continual review of “the latest (and best) literature,” he picked up a surprising “data signal” in October from emerging studies in Latin America. Ivermectin, a safe, cheap, FDA-approved anti-parasitic drug, was showing remarkable anti-viral and anti-inflammatory agency as a repurposed drug—the most powerful COVID-19 killer known to science.
Though small and endlessly diverse by large, Western big pharma “one-size-fits all” random control trials, the Ivermectin studies were a mosaic of hundreds of scientists and many thousands of patients in trials all over the world, all showing the same remarkable efficacy against all phases of COVID-19 no matter what dose or age or severity of the patient. “Penicillin never was randomized,” Marik says. “It just obviously worked. Ivermectin obviously works.”
Marik was astonished. “If you were to say, tell me the characteristics of a perfect drug to treat COVID-19, what would you ask for?” he said. “I think you would ask firstly for something that’s safe, that’s cheap, that’s readily available, and has anti-viral and anti-inflammatory properties. People would say, “That’s ridiculous. There could not possibly be a drug that has all of those characteristics. That’s just unreasonable. But we do have such a drug. The drug is called Ivermectin.”
The scientific evidence was overwhelming, he said. The data from twenty-seven studies, sixteen of them randomized controlled trials, demonstrated, with highly statistically significant, overwhelmingly positive, consistent, and reproducible rates, that people who got sick with COVID-19 were far more likely to quickly get better at home when they took Ivermectin. They didn’t go to the hospital. Housemates of people with COVID-19 who took Ivermectin didn’t get infected. People who got moderately ill in hospitals didn’t go to the ICU; they got better quicker and went home faster. Hospitals didn’t get overrun. The drug even saved elderly, critically ill COVID-19 patients from dying compared to those routinely dying elsewhere. Six prevention studies showed Ivermectin reduced the risk of getting COVID-19 by 92.5 percent, superior to many vaccines.
https://www.mountainhomemag.com/2021/05/01/356270/the-drug-that-cracked-covid
Memorial Day…
Both my grandfather's were Veterans, and my father as well. I honor their sacrifice and the sacrifices of every other Veteran by trying to live my life in a manner that fills their massive shoes to the best of my ability. I'm grateful to have known all three for most of my life, and for the roles they played and the huge impact they had on me. I'm grateful for what I currently have, and it's on display below. I'm grateful for the struggles I've had to endure, for they've shown me a strength I didn't know I had, and gave me perspective on what really counts. A smarter man then me once said, "Tomorrow is promised to no one." That's why we honor and celebrate today - because we're fortunate enough to be able to do so, and that by living our lives to the fullest in a decent and positive way, we start to repay the giant debt of gratitude we owe those current and former members. Thank you Dad, and I miss you Grandpop K & A.
Here are two articles that put the holiday in its proper frame. The debt we owe these men is incalculable. 🇺🇸
https://aclj.org/us-military/memorial-day-why-we-remember-those-who-died-for-our-nation
https://thejeffreylord.com/happy-memorial-day-dad-and-thanks/
What I’m Reading…
**Biden Administration shuts down Trump-era probe into origin of Covid in Wuhan.
**Facebook reverses its policy to censor posts suggesting that Covid was man-made. Muh fact-checkers.
**Virologists Say Genetic "Fingerprints" Prove COVID-19 Man-Made, 'No Credible Natural Ancestor'
**TLDR from the brilliant Arthur Hayes on our fiat economy. You’ll learn more financial and economic truths in this essay than you will from a 4 year Economics degree from almost any liberal arts school these days.
**Secession and Balkanization are two themes of written about repeatedly. Allowing cities, counties and states to choose their destiny is a better approach then enforcing at the barrel of a gun. Idaho counties attempt to bid adieu to Oregon..
**Wisdom from Stanley Druckenmiller, one of the greatest investors of all time.
What I’m Watching…
Twitter Octagon
Parting Words….
Do You want to honor American warriors who made the ultimate sacrifice?
Let me tell you where to start.
Draw a line in the sand
Cease to forfeit individual liberty
Vehemently advocate for freedom
Adhere to sound moral character
Boldly propagate truth
Refuse to give another inch
Indoctrinate yourself with the principles and causes our warriors died to uphold.
Nuff Said.
-Chadd Wright
That’s it for this week, thanks for reading. Make sure to hit subscribe if you haven’t done so yet.
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