changegonnacome

What are markets/exchanges......they are venue via which demand/supply for 'x' interact & transact.....in creating a market you also create the by-product of market exchanges.......signal.....because your dealing with 'real' people it turns out signal is really really important.....ever hear of monkey see, monkey do.......well price/volume are the most important 'signals' in markets......you can't have a trustworthy market, one with fidelity if both the price and volume being recorded across the market/exchanges can not be trusted....say when 60%+ of mkt volume is happening on exchanges offshore with no KYC/controls. CME may be trustworthy, Coinbase/Kraken/Gemini too.....but as I've shown Binance is the 800ilb gorilla in BTC trading volume then add KuCoin/Heubi........the price & volume signal on Binance therefore cross-contaminates the whole market due to its size. Put simply the CME reference rate is corrupted by the presense of Binance/KuCoin/Heubi - it is a deeply flawed spot market & as such to allow a spot ETF to trade on NYSE/Nasdaq would give crooks on Binance unfettered access to the deepest & most liquid capital market in the world. Trust me the day the SEC approves a BTC-ETF is like the best day of your life if your connected to the Binance crime family. The classic wash trade game is to create upward price momentum wave using fake volume/price.....creating lots of signal......humans buy stocks when they are going up.....they chase price up......you start a fake upward wave in Bitcoin on Binance and it attracts REAL volume/money via suckers.......the Binance price/volume infects/corrupts the Coinbase price....cause signal feeds into price. You can play this game up and down....attracting naive buyers & sellers into a 'rigged' market........see BTC volatility isnt a bug, its a feature. (1) the SEC doesn't allow BTC futures with CME BRR - thats the CFTC, not the SEC....so wrong regulatory agency out the gates (2) why the CFTC allows BTC futures with CME BRR I can only guess is two fold...number one...this is a derivates exchange product its end users predominately are not mom & pop retail....to trade futures your considered to be or certainly have to attest to be sophictated financial market participant (the subtext is you therefore probably realize the 'tape' in BTC is complete bullshit) (2) but lets even pretend the SEC did somehow approve or allow the futures to trade.....it kind of wouldn't matter for the purpose of our discussion on the BTC-ETF......the US capital markets isn't a monolith....it has layers...those layers are there to protect retail.......there are differing disclosure & effectively safety/risk/experience requirements....derivates/futures/OTC/accredited investor etc. Too many 'layers' to go into. The MOST important takeaway is that the highest protection & the highest standards are reserved for where you think this BTC-ETF is going to trade......Nasdaq or NYSE.....because this is the market where my grandma and your grandma operates in.....its the deepest pool of capital in the world. A BTC-ETF approval would effectively be like voluntarily building a money pipeline between scam artists overseas (China/Seychelles/BVI) & the wallet of Joe Sixpack & his Grandma/Grandpa in the United Sates......like I said the day that ever happens there will be the mother of all parties in the offices of Binance.....its like the best thing that could ever happen to you as a fraudster....to get that conduit opened up. CZ & Co. would literally cry tears of joy.

Wrong. Here's the last 24hrs of Bitcoin trading volume by centralized exchange: Source: https://coinranking.com/coin/Qwsogvtv82FCd+bitcoin-btc/exchanges Binance is the 800ilb gorilla in spot Bitcoin trading volume as well as altcoins/shitcoins. As per above - approving BTC-ETF would be totally inconsistent with charges against Binance.... Very possible.....and thats exactly why the SEC will not approve the BTC-ETF.....this is a spot market where nobody, even crypto fans believe the 'tape' has any sort of fidelity to it. I mean why would they - the guys at Tether in bed with CZ can create effectively fake money out of thin air at any moment they want & go into BTC and do anything they want with the price....so not only do you have wash trading problem in the spot market due to lack of controls.......you've got a market, offshore, that is primarily externally funded via USDT......so even real questions marks around the validity of perceived "real" dollars in the market itself....when the dominating BTC settling currency today arent even dollars at all but rather fake dollar (USDT's) & where the fake dollar folks can't seem to show anyone where the real dollars are.....and nobody in the commercial paper market (where these dollars are supposedly parked) has ever heard of tether. You see the problem - like I said - the SEC approving a BTC-ETF would be the SEC stating the BTC spot market is robust with sufficient investor protections......I think via your comments & what I've outlined above......its IMPOSSIBLE for the SEC to approve the spot market as robust and by extension then approve the BTC-ETF

Yeah of course I'm sure BTC-ETF would trade on the backend on only a Citadel or Coinbase exchange....but really that isn't the problem......all the price action & signal in the market is being driven by offshore entities.......who cares if your exchange is respectable if offshore entities are (1) sufficiently large & (2) 'painting the tape' or in this case 'painting the ledger'. Your ETF trading exchange venue can be pristine but the spot market itself is scuzzy = no SEC approval. You've got alot of faith in the competency of central banks & regulators + internasional bi-lateral & multi-lateral cooperation.....to think that is all gonna come together.

Yeah lets see $69,000 feels quite far away right now......and hell of alot people have burned in this cycle....crypto.com & FTX superbowl commercials feel like a real high tide moment......not saying BTC is a scheme but the problem with schemes sometimes is you eventually run out of people that haven't been burned by them yet. Totally reserve the idea & possibility I'm wrong - BTC as digital gold has some merit and it's a question of getting ever increasing adoption around that idea/believe.......I think that's possible but it feels unlikely. If I was in this space - I for sure would be a BTC maxi.........everything else in its orbit (shitcoins/utility tokens etc.) tarnishes it with a bad name & ultimately slows/hinders BTC's adoption.

Fake volume can’t move - cause it’s fake. The offshore guys want a game to pick the pockets of American consumers via a future spot ETF….here’s the playbook - cool off , for now, on the fake BTC volume….allow respectable exchanges with proper KYC in EU/US to ‘own’ a greater & greater proportion of the underlying market 60 or 70%….wait for SEC ETF approval and then turn back on the market manipulation & wash-trading….just now with a really wonderful and deep pocketed ETF patesy at the table called the American capital markets. Good luck getting ‘market’ share of a largely fictitious market - I wish them luck honestly the world would be a better place if Binance/FTX/Huebi was displaced by Citadel, Fidelity & Schwab. Whats becoming clearer and clearer with each collapse, bankruptcy, implosion in crytpo land…..is how small the space actually is once you pull out the fake volume, wash trading, prop trading & bananas leverage enabled by high yield fraud etc. It’s just way way way smaller than anybody I think has imagined. In shitcoin land for sure - it’s a bunch of fictitious volume and occasionally a real person shows up and their pocket gets picked.

Underlying spot BTC market volume dominated as it is by offshore exchanges is the barrier here. You’ve got a chicken and egg problem for the SEC to ever approve a BTC ETF. End of story. Right now the spot BTC market volume is dominated by a long list of extremely dodgy entities….the 800ilb gorilla @ 62% share (Binance) has just been charged by the SEC with about the most heinous crimes an exchange/FS entity can be accused of. Until centralized BTC exchange market volume tilts in a 60 or 70% way to respectable entities in the US or EU…then the spot ETF is never happening. How could it? The spot market is dominated by nefarious actors completely outside the purview of any regulatory agency that the SEC respects. Tell me that in 2025 BTC centralized volume market share will hit 75% for Coinbase, Paxos, Gemini & Kraken then we can have a conversation about a spot ETF approval until then it’s a pipe dream. The future Fidelity/Blackrock ETF rejection letter from the SEC will say as much and refer many many times back to the Binance complaint as proof that the spot market is deeply flawed. This ETF rejection is a cert and it’s not even close.

@alxcii where have you been recently? Let me catch you up. Insufficient data in the past was enough to deny spot ETF's........what the hell have we got now?........an abundance of data, an SEC complaint that includes charges of market manipulation as well as "non-existent trading controls" against the LARGEST mkt share spot exchange in the world...we've also got the dead body of one of the previous largest spot exchange floating around down in the Bahamas..... which imploded in a ponzi scheme where customers funds were co-mingled with an internal prop trading group with all types of fraud and manipulation and a bankruptcy from hell where the guy that did Enron says THIS is way worse than Enron. To use your words - I think the SEC just went from "insufficient data" to an abundance of data & evidence to show the underlying spot market in BTC is horribly horribly flawed & manipulated. Couple of other points: (1) See exchange market share below.......now add up for me all the exchanges listed below and tell me which ones are "on-shore" and within the purview of the SEC and what % of volume it comes too - <15%.........which means that maybe 80% plus but lets be even kinder more than half of the crypto spot market is offshore......outside the eyes, ears or remit of the SEC. (2) Read this again & tell me about what the SEC thinks of the 62% exchange player in this space: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-101 https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-101 Are we reading the same case.......couple of quotes: "non-existent trading controls" "Sigma Chain engaged in manipulative trading that artificially inflated the platform’s trading volume." The Binance case as laid out by SEC is not about shitcoins & sloppy trading controls...read quotes above.....it effectively articulates a case around a completely criminal enterprise that has "NON-EXISTANT" trading controls & is ENGAGED in manipulative trading activities.....it also goes on to talk about web of related parties where ownership and control is completely & purposely obscured for presumed nefarious reasons. Short version is the SEC thinks Binance is basically a rats nest. And all this might be a fart in outer space - if it weren't talking about the worlds LARGEST centralized spot crypto exchange. How the hell can anyone from Nasdaq surveil & monitor various offshore entities like Binance........when 85% of the trading is off-shore....guess they could go to Binance HQ? Oh wait there isnt a HQ......guess they could hang out with the Kucoin guys in the Seychelles & ask nicely for some trading data to be put on a USB stick and NASDAQ could go through it back in NYC after their few days on the beach. Nasdaq hasn't a hope in hell of monitoring anything - look what the SEC has just alleged - the largest crypto exchange has non-existant trading controls & is engaged in manipulation..........surveil what.....Nasdaq would be in-gesting nonsense data from Binance, OKK, Kucoin, Huobi....to the extent that they would even give it to them....it would literally be a shit in - shit out trade activity model. Nobody could stand over a megabyte of data. Agree defo not on a whim. I know the way these companies work - this ETF project started 18-24 months ago, maybe more...internal working groups bla bla....seventeen layers of committees & papers & proposals....this was all before anybody knew who SBF was and Matt Damon told everyone that fortune favored the brave.......the world has changed & FTX has created a political constituency around tidying things up........but the Blackrock machine had invested x amount and they said scew it we've invested the $$$$$.....lets just put the proposal in and test the system its already a sunk cost........we'll get some innovation theatre value out of this attempt. 0% How could they? - the 62% player in the spot market has been charged with "non-existant trading controls" and also been accused of engaging in "market manipulation" & "inflating trading volume" Then think about it could you ever, as the SEC, get to a place where you were comfortable the market was NOT being manipulated.....look at your largest regulatory counterparties in this endeavor......you have to go sit in an office across the table from: > Binance - HQ - nowhere wherever Cz says he is > Huebi - HQ - Seychelles >Kucoin - HQ - Seychelles >Bitfiniex - HK and/or BVI Above is maybe what 70%+ of the spot mkt.....Like i said look at your regulatory counterparties......look at the lack of oversight.....think about the fidelity of whatever information they would send the SEC or Nasdaq....come on.

Apologies for my tone - came across a bit harsh there - lets see.........and happy to come back and say you were right! I think the government can have minor inconsistencies in enforcement or approach......but its rarely completely diametrically opposed to itself on the big stuff & especially inside one agency.....I guess my forcefulness comes from the fact that to approve any of these spot ETF's it would require effectively an enforcement agency to have what I can only describe as a Jekyll and Hyde regulatory approach to the space. The SEC in the Binance case has put its card on the table in regards to BTC and exchanges....... & shown its cards re: tokens & regulatory clarity on the application of howey & securities law. The crypto folks have been asking for regulatory clarity.....they got it.....but the problem is it isn't the clarity they wanted.

I'm sorry your living in cloud cuckoo conspiracy land if you think Blackrock is getting this approved & I explained why above very clearly.......it would be completely inconsistent with the regulatory actions just undertaken against Binance.......end of story. Think about it for a second & just read the Binance compliant & then think about what entities are responsible for the majority BTC volume. The vast majority of BTC volume trades offshore & questionable exchanges (Binance + others)........wash trading.....painting the tape.....tether turned into BTC & back again......unknown leverage...unknown counterparties....no disclosures....whale holders pushing the market around and nobody knows who they are or where they are cause of willful KYC failures........BlackRock might be the establishment......but the SEC is not about to open the wallets of American consumers via a spot ETF to allow seamless & tax advantaged access to what they've confirmed in recent SEC action to be an instrument operating in a highly flawed and manipulated market.

Never gonna happen - the SEC is not approving any of these. I'd love to know why BlackRock & Fidelity bothered to file these requests....knowing these behemoths they probably spent a few million already doing the leg work and said screw it will just put in and see rather than just trashing the R&D spend completely - at least they'll have a rejection letter to show for the torched funds. Like think about the complaint they just filed against Binance for a second in the context of these spot bitcoin ETF's..........the complaint effectively says that one of the world's largest BITCOIN (+altcoin) exchanges (Binance) is awash in wash trading......sure shitcoins.......but also BTC. No controls, no kyc, no nuthin. That 30% of the volume on there is nonsense. So this same SEC is going to approve a spot ETF for the general public that trades an underlying instrument where the SEC knows that an outrageous amount of trading in that instrument is being done on exchanges riddled with wash trading without controls & where all the counterparties are obscured by total lack of KYC. The SEC approving a spot ETF would be like locking your windows and leaving your front door open in terms of investor protection. It just ain't gonna happen.

Agree with a lot of what you’ve said @Xerxes in a game of true escalation I wonder who’s bluff gets called first - I suspect NATO given the existential anxiety asymmetry I’ve talked about before….it matters to Russia a lot…haven’t they demonstrated that launching the attack of Feb 2022 knowing the international commendation & sanctions was a cert. However we won’t litaget this point again…the Western consensus is that Putin is an imperialist, my contention is he’s a Russian nationalist desperately trying to preserve any semblance of Russian global power left via acts of aggression that are ultimately underpinned by security paranoia. I know this is a contrarian non-narrative view and one open to ridicule as being pro-Russian but maths don’t lie - Russia crossed the Ukrainian border in 2022 with at most 190,000 men….if Putin is an imperialist he and his generals must have mis-read the invasion communiques…an army of 1,900,000 men would be required to ‘take’ Ukraine , not 190k. If you take the view as I do then re:security the West will lose in a game of escalation the stakes are much higher for Putin than for us - there is a point where ‘we’ chicken out and he doesn’t. Not sure what that point is but my guess it comes when Ukraine runs out of the only resource we are not willing to throw at this conflict and that’s men. This IMO is Putin’s medium term strategy and it doesn’t involve nukes - it involves patience and time….the attrition math, as I’ve indicated above, is in his favor the get out of jail card for the West is an unexpected & swift regime change in the Kremlin......which being honest feels to me like wishful thinking in the West driven by the deep primal knowledge that when ‘men’ are required in the future to sustain the Ukrainian defense/offense we will lack the commitment to provide them & we’ll be embarrassed and ashamed of ourselves given our earlier rhetoric around democracy & freedom.

Indeed - the question the West needs to ask itself after the result becomes clear of this summer/fall counter-offensive and in a scenario where Ukraine has potentially made limited gains at a high casualty cost is: (1) the West willing to help Ukraine with what it will need most for the next leg of this conflict - men? (2) If not willing to provide them with men..(my base case)......are 'we' going to continue to provide them the equipment, money & encouragement such that they will put every Ukrainian male age 17-64 through the Eastern front meat-grinder before accepting some comprise less than their current aspirational military objective.

Yep its brutal stuff - the issue with trench warfare or wars of attrition is that they quickly become a numbers game: (1) artillery (2) men (3) objective (1) Russia has an artillery advantage for sure. It has an artillery war machine at its captive disposal. Ukraine has strong backers with artillery capabilities lets hope this is not a limiting factor for Ukraine relative to Russia. (2) Russia also has a population size advantage....crudely they can put more young men through the meat grinder than Ukraine can - it would require more mobilization and then the question becomes whether Putin has the political capital to do that. I haven't researched it so maybe somebody can answer it for me but has Ukraine effectively maximized and mobilized every fighting age man it can by now? My guess is yes but cant be sure. (3) Russia is attempting to hold on to territory (East Ukraine), Ukraine is attempting to capture from Russia territory it holds. Russia is in a defensive posture & Ukraine is in an offensive posture. The exchange ratio between offensive & defensive positioning is 3:1....the math says in this posture that Ukraine may need to throw 3 men at every one Russian soldier position. The fatality rate falls disproportionally on the offensive party in this scenario sometimes in a 2:1 death ratio. The price of a counter-offensive is high in terms of men. The problem with the above equation, over time, which unfortunately favors the Russian - is that Ukraine will likely run out of men before Russia does. Unless Putin's regime implodes at increasing domestic mobilization.

Me too - got it wrong - or maybe more correctly the timing completely wrong which is the same thing as being wrong Guess SPY companies are by positive selection better businesses and so have better than average pricing power.......inflation was an opportunity for them to push price & flex that muscle they have. Might help explain SPY vs. Russell 2000 delta. Margins expanded or could be expanded by these businesses with the backdrop of strong economy/strong consumer. They also found, that when they looked internally a little later in the post-covid cycle (when macro rumblings began to emerge) that they had fat to trim and they did giving a another tailwind to margins. Most notably big tech of course which had become bloated. Some evidence of course of accountancy shenanigans where CFO's extended useful life/deprecation calculations for data centre equipment etc.. So for sure some levers being pulled to 'make the numbers' too. There is occurring now through Fed actions disinflationary pressures building..albeit way slower than any would have thought......they just haven't quite landed yet which is the BIG forecasting error of the last 12 months.....that the US economy had become so insensitive to rates & that the tailwind/echo from fiscal stimulus had such an extended half-life that it managed to sustain 3.4% unemployment with Fed Funds sitting at 5.25%.......nobody including me saw that coming. In some respects the failure to budge supercore....is connected at the hip with margins.....they are twin brothers.....supercores failure to move down is the same environment that has allowed margin strength to remain....falling supercore i.e. true disinflation progress is when you would expect margins to bite and as the Fed/JPow pointed out at the June meeting & by way of flagging further hikes in July/Sept there has been ZERO progress made on supercore disinflation after 15 months & 500bps of rate rises & so in some respects we shouldn't be surprised that margins are yet to get pinched more fully.....margins getting pinched IS disinflation. Put another way the absence of demonstrably significant margin compression is part of the problem that is alarming the Fed and is going to require them to continue raising in H2. When you start seeing disinflationary progress on supercore its a sign that margins are likely contemporaneously getting squeezed too. No progress on supercore = margin maintenance. Lets see the simple thesis is that the Fed fails at many things - forecasting, communicating, timing - the one thing the Fed rarely fails at, given they control the price of money, is inducing a recession/slow down if that is what they desire....their inability to create a recession in a more normal timeframe.....fashion shouldn't be misinterpreted as a failure to do so...they will get there in the end.....they seem intent on continuing with hikes until that is achieved and they will achieve it......they won't rest till unemployment spikes upwards to at least 4.5% (ballpark NAIRU). The book says that in doing so they wont be able to stop it going to 5.4% such is the negative momentum that builds up & the lagging nature of unemployment as the last thing 'to go'.

Kamikaze + nuclear works very well. That was my point. I wasn’t trying to get you to think about Russian pilots flying planes into aircraft carriers. It was a case study in how extreme and reckless a nation state, but let’s call it a regime, can act when it’s survival is threatened. They will act and take courses of action you could never imagine possible & you would discount as being too reckless to be possible. This was Japan in 1941…it was so bonkers they would attack the US on home turf that is beggared belief when it happened. Your forgetting the golden rule - nationalism is the greatest force in our time….global Russo-Phobia is at an all time high…we took their McDonald’s away……we are attempting to make the average Russian family poorer via OUR actions (you or I would say Putin is doing this but it doesn’t matter what you or I say we don’t program Russian State media)…..a narrative can be spun where we in the West are taking bread from their table….I’m not too sure what the level of extreme Russian nationalism was prior to February 2022 invasion was….but let me help you with something……it’s higher today than it was then, for sure, regardless of what the BBC/CNN tells you about the Russian state collapsing from the inside or widespread discontent….I look forward to seeing it but the book says you strangle a country economically, you strengthen the regime & stoke nationalism…..the people in Russia are being fed propaganda for sure….but that’s beside the point…we are supplying Putin the raw materials & kindling required to fuel Russian nationalism…if he’s unable to get the fire lit it would amount to an even greater failure of his leadership than his misjudged invasion of Ukraine. I would caution believing narratives about the average Russian person losing faith in his/her own country’s leadership. Nothing stirs the blood like perceived or real conflict.

Not suggesting we back down....but also kinda suggesting we in the West don't attempt or lets call it aspire to 'win' so completely either...which I know is tough when you get into war one automatically begins to think in binary outcomes and surely 'winning' is the point of getting into a conflict in the first place, right?.......however the above Japan thingy was just a little thought experiment for those that dream of 'winning' and 'defeating' Russia so completely in this conflict....defeated nations do crazy, irrational & unpredictable things......so I guess what I'm saying is be careful of what you wish for, you just might get it......as folks never quite think through what peril exists in the West/Ukraine 'winning' so completely in this conflict. You know the dream on CNN.......retired Generals with maps and videos of a Russian army bloodied and battered retreating as Ukraine with NATO equipment drives East, pushing Russian forces out of Ukraine taking back the Donbass/Crimea (which are now due to emigration of Ukrainian's at the start of the war....are really just majority full of ethnically Russian people now).....& who knows maybe Ukraine in gaining these now ethically Russian regions engages in a little ethnic cleansing as payback for Russian atrocities (not sure anybody would be surprised if this happened?)....and maybe to be safe the Ukrainian army decides to push its battles lines deep into Russian territory to create some security space....all while maybe further wins & progress on the sanctions front from the Biden administration means India signs up & refuses Russian oil.....and the Russian economy begins to implode......sounds like the WH's and the Western medias dream scenario........but then stop and think what that all looks like from a seat in the Kremlin.....then think about what an Imperial Japan so defeated in Oct 1941 was so recklessly willing to do in its final throes......they attacked a nation ten times their size with a military capability with no hope of achieving anything. Their reckless abandon when faced with total defeat is best illustrated by a word that jumped from their language into our language - 'kamikaze' I wonder what the Russian equivalent word for 'kamikaze' is? I hope I never find out.

Backing a nuclear rat into a corner - is not a good strategy - is it saber rattling right now, for sure it is......do country's do crazy erratic bonkers things when they are backed into a corner & their survival is at stake, sure they do......remember little 1941 Japan attacking the mighty USA at Pearl Harbor......pretty crazy huh?.....bonkers even......with a 99% probability that Japan would end up being totally destroyed in an all out confrontation with the USA & and less than 1% chance they would succeed in anyway militarily but they still did it. Why? Because their survival was threatened and they were being backed corner - like Buffet's purchasing of the trading companies there recently for this very reason - Japan in the late 1930's & early 40's was completely dependent on foreign imports - oil and steel. In a ratcheting up of hostilities in Asia where the Japanese were the aggressors the US began to work on various embargoes and sanctions against Japan: > 1938 - the USA proposed with Britain to blockade the whole island. Britain refused on the grounds it was too escalatory > 1938 - US stopped supplying Japan with machined parts & aviation fuel....cutting off oil, was considered too extreme given Japan's complete dependence on US oil. > 1940 - further scrap steel sanctions were put in place, strangling Japanese economy > July 1941 - complete & total embargo of all oil exports to Japan.....Japan economy was internally imploding > Oct 1941 - Japanese economy estimated to have 3 months of oil reserves remaining > Nov 1941 - Pearl Harbor attack It was outright CRAZY for Japan to attack the United States at Pearl Harbor...they effectively signed their own obituary with that act. They did it anyway. We should thank India, China & various African/Middle East nations....basically half the planets population..... for not going along with Biden's sanctions dream. Squeezing the Russian economy & raising the costs for their act of war in Ukraine is appropriate........but too much of good thing can be a bad thing......US sanctions policy if completely successful in getting India + others on board would have strangled the Russian economy to death in 2022/early 2023. 1941 Japan resorted to a crazy, hair brained and sure to fail act of aggression at Pearl Harbor when sufficiently corned (estimates suggest Japan was on course to completely run out of oil/aviation fuel by Feb 1942) leaving it completely defenseless against attacks from its enemies (China/USA etc.). They decided to launch an attack on the United States at Pearl Harbor that was destined to fail. Now imagine 1941 Japan again but this time they have 5,977 intercontinental nuclear missles.

Back to our nordstream pipeline explosion & 'who dunnit' mystery This nugget of history rhyming popped up in a recent talk I listened too. In the early 1980's the United States was incensed that West Germany was increasingly trading more and more with the USSR (sound familiar)....... providing it with valuable foreign currency. The United States couldn't have been clearer & became intent on trying to slow the USSR's increasing acquisition of foreign trading relationships. Then in 1982 a Russian pipeline in Siberia exploded with a blast equivalent of 3 kiloton nuclear device. The story goes that the USA blew it up - with a trojan horse software that it nested inside a Canadian companies product that they allowed Russia to steal. https://www.risidata.com/Database/Detail/cia-trojan-causes-siberian-gas-pipeline-explosion https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/02/27/reagan-approved-plan-to-sabotage-soviets/a9184eff-47fd-402e-beb2-63970851e130/ So Nordstream 'might' be the SECOND Russian pipeline the USA has blown up in my lifetime, not the first. Allegedly.

Yeah exactly - holding SPY on margin can work.......but where the margin element is constrained by whatever you can bounce around at super low or no cost non-callable debt thats been discussed elsewhere - like 0% introductory cards. I think to do that you'd want some quant SPY expected return model helping you guide the margin up or down at the right time - kind like the Gotham model. - www.gotham.com. individual names - can for sure be different......sometimes prices are so nuts and you know the business back to front that it gets to be hard to loose & I've got VERY aggressive at times......but only when its like shooting fish in barrel.....still requires caution cause sometimes the fish shoot back.

Not that long - I'd need to check but fairly sure I started my clickty clack your gonna get whacked talk back in June 2022 at the very dawning of the infamous 'bottom' thread......which meant I sidestepped 2022 SPY down year with an aggregate ~15% positive return across account....which was ya know a 33% outperformance relative to SPY 's negative 18.7%.......and this year I'm up 14.2% so trailing SPY by 2% at MidYear.......I'm an 80% invested bear......and agree with @gfp post & chart.....the market goes up what 78% of years.....and does so in a bumpy fashion i.e. big moves up happen over a few days......the math is irrefutable....so 80% exposure is as low as I go......and @Gregmal @dealraker might well be right.....leaving that 20% rolling around in tbills waiting for the walls to fall might turn out to be dumb......but I like having cash around if something like VIx40 goes down.......no harm too as we can all have a VIX40 moment in our lives too!

I will .My bearish tilt & following the facts have served my portfolio performance well this past 18 months...with a bullish/aggressive track record prior to that to quel that perma-bull labeling............broken clocks are right twice a day.....I don't discount I'm a broke clock....the bull clock, what's the stat the mkt goes up 78% of the time........lets see if I can change my tune to a bullish one again on US equities when the facts change & its advantageous to do so....the framework for that is the exact same as what I articulated above but in reverse....yield curve un-inverts - credit expands, CPI drops below wage increases - such that Sixpack's purchasing power expands and a Republican controlled senate,house & WH starts mailing out newly minted cheques to bribe voters & set themselves up for the Midterms........and I'm sitting at 112.5% gross exposure (or more).

If you're asking me why it matters whether the avg US household is either expanding or contracting its real consumption YoY & how that might pertain to company earnings and by extension quoted stock prices....I'll just point you back to my post before the last one where I've answered that.

You didn't answer my question - where are the Greg's out there getting more purchasing power from in the next 12 months? Answers on a postcard

Unemployment/economy goes off cliff first......markets follow earnings.....earnings follow the economy/unemployment. I mean the theoretical question goes something like this. Is there a level of Fed funds in which the economy becomes impaired from a growth, spending & unemployment perspective. The answer is of course YES. Is the next 25bps or 50bps of hikes going to do that......I've no idea......but does each incremental 25bps rise have a higher probability of achieving the above than the previous 25bps. Yeah for sure it has - at a certain point if you increase the dosage you kill the patient. I'm a simple guy - I ask myself broadly - are those around me this time next year gonna be able to expand their purchasing power relative to today or is their purchasing capacity on a probability weighted basis likely to contract? Summed up those folks around me are the economy. Every macro measure , that feeds down into micro purchasing power expansion that I can think of is pointing to a diminution of purchasing power YoY into 2024 for the median individual/household. So three sources of funds/spending in any economy as I've said before - wages, credit & fiscal fueled deficit spending/transfers: Wages: - EoY 2023 salary negotiations it appears with the macro backdrop detorioting....will fail to secure CPI like raises.......purchasing power via wages will on avg then very likely contract YoY in this MOST important of categories. This is to say nothing about unemployment moving up from 3.4% to 4.x%.....for these unfortunate folks purchasing power will contract by ~85%......never mind the 2% for folks who secure a 2% raise in a 4% inflation economy. Credit: - Cash out refis are/were a great source of incremental YoY purchasing power expansion.....cash out refis are closed...you dont cash out refi a 3% mortgage into a 7% one on a house that's dropped nominal 5% in value since your last refi. - Credit (personal/auto) is a great source of expanding ones purchasing power.....but the yield curve is deeply inverted & so the incentive for banks to expand their customers purchasing power via incremental credit is not there. Credit is contracting. Loan officers surveys are showing this. Even when credit is available consumers are balking at the rates and deferring purchases most readily seen in autos. Deferred and/or trade down purchases are the oxygen of recessions. Fiscal: - recent debt ceiling negotiations let you know what the Republican playbook is here until the new president is sworn in in 2025....they are intent on shrinking or at least constraining fiscal spending growth wherever they can....student loan repayments restarted, unspent COVID funds pulled back to treasury....the Republicans control the House.....all spending bills originate in the house....expanding federal fiscal spend 18 months out from a Presidential election aids the incumbent.....if Biden had control of the House we would be seeing $1trn spending bills but he doesn't.....the Republican's for the good of the country or for the good of the GOP are attempting to kneecap fiscal spend at the Federal level for the next 18 months. So Uncle Sam is not going to expand anyways purchasing power YoY either. Anyway let me know if anyone can figure out how Joe Sixpack is gonna have more purchasing power in June 2025 than he has today? Genuinely curious through which mechanism (wages/credit/fiscal) the median individual next year will be in better shape from a purchasing power perspective than he/she is today. I just don't see it and I can't figure out a pathway to expanding per capita purchasing power growth. Let me know if you have any ideas* - genuinely - cause the avg consumer in my mind is kinda cornered right now when you overlay my framework (but maybe my framework is flawed). * one bright spot actually is that Biden/Democrats slightly spiked the football back in 2021 with the IRA & BBB bills.....these fiscal spending programs ramp up into the general election in 2024....need to do some work to see how meaningfully they'll likely contribute.

Yeah in this instance I side with bond guys - I once heard it described that the equity market is like a frat house.......and the bond market is like a faculty department. The recent retail mania -APE/AMC/BBY etc. plus degenerate institutional leverage at Archegos/Tigers cubs etc. sure has a frat house/ frontal lobe impairment feel to it.