RECENT EPISODES
Fri 18 SeptThe Fed Is Hiking Into A Growth Slowdown | Weekly RoundupIn this episode, the Federal Reserve's recent rate hike raises concerns about its hawkish stance amid a potential growth slowdown, with market expectations diverging from the Fed's guidance. Vincent Deloitte warns of a looming recession as personal income growth declines and inflation persists, particularly due to rising oil prices. The episode also explores challenges in the housing market and the European Central Bank's ineffective policies, while highlighting potential trade opportunities in the context of a weakening Euro.Wed 16 SeptThe Market Is Mispricing A Correlation Shock | Dean CurnuttIn this episode, Dean Curnutt examines the market's low implied correlation among stocks, currently between 5 to 15%, and warns that this mispricing could lead to risky investor assumptions. He discusses the disconnect between equity and credit markets, emphasizing the potential for a correlation shock that could significantly impact the S&P 500.Fri 11 SeptThe Bond Market Is Trapping The Fed | Weekly RoundupIn this episode, the bond market's signals suggest that the Federal Reserve's recent $6 billion in buybacks is insufficient to manage rising yields, prompting calls for more decisive action. With a projected fair value of 5.8% for the 10-year bond amid a 6.6% nominal GDP, the Fed faces pressure to raise interest rates, especially as political incentives complicate its decisions ahead of the midterms. Additionally, concerns over inflation and the semiconductor trade's slowdown highlight the uncertain economic landscape.Wed 2 SeptFiscal Dominance Is Breaking The 60/40 Portfolio | Matt Hougan & Bob HaberIn this episode, Matt Hougan and Bob Haber explore the decline of the traditional 60/40 portfolio, arguing that it fails to protect against currency debasement driven by government policies. They advocate for diversifying into gold and Bitcoin, highlighting their potential as hedges against the dollar's degradation. The discussion also touches on the implications of low interest rates, the volatility of Bitcoin compared to gold, and the challenges of managing U.S. debt in a changing fiscal landscape.Thu 27 AugDruck Calls Out Bessent & Will Jackson Hole Derail The Debasement Trade? | Weekly RoundupIn this episode, Druckenmiller critiques Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's reliance on buybacks to manage rising yields, calling for Congressional action on economic reforms. The upcoming Jackson Hole meeting is anticipated to influence market dynamics, though skepticism surrounds the Fed's potential policy shifts. Additionally, the discussion touches on the implications of Anthropic's IPO and the challenges facing the AI sector, highlighting concerns about political volatility and the sustainability of frontier AI models amid rising inflation and the debasement trade.Thu 20 AugTreasury-Led Financial Repression Is Ushering In A Debasement Regime | Weekly RoundupTreasury Secretary Bessent is executing what speakers describe as a fiscal operation twist, doubling long-end buyback operations from 2 billion to 4 billion dollars per operation and funding them with short-duration bill issuance, effectively removing duration from the market outside the normal quarterly process. The coordinated framework keeps the Fed rhetorically hawkish while Bessent manages yields ahead of midterm elections roughly two and a half months away, a political deadline speakers identify as the primary driver of pace and scale.Wed 12 AugThe Growth Strategy Trapping The Fed | Darius DaleDarius Dale of 42 Macro argues that the administration has locked itself into running the economy hot, labeled paradigm C, as the least destructive path through a US debt-to-GDP ratio near 100 percent, with cutting risking social unrest and printing risking inflation spirals.Fri 7 AugWashington Is Suppressing Volatility To Keep The AI Boom Alive | Weekly RoundupThe episode centers on the argument that Washington is actively suppressing market volatility to protect the AI buildout and Trump's political standing ahead of midterms, with Treasury Secretary Bessent identified as the key actor who shifted volatility control from the Fed to the Treasury by selling euros from the Exchange Stabilization Fund to weaken the dollar without disturbing the bond market.Fri 7 AugWashington Is Suppressing Volatility To Keep The AI Boom Alive | Weekly RoundupWashington is actively suppressing bond market volatility to protect the AI buildout, with Treasury Secretary Bessent executing what the hosts describe as a generational Plaza Accord-style intervention by selling euros from the Exchange Stabilization Fund and publicly promoting the FIMA liquidity facility, shifting volatility control from the Federal Reserve to the Treasury. The strategic logic is that hyperscaler AI infrastructure financing has migrated to long-duration debt markets, making bond stability a direct precondition for the buildout's survival.Wed 5 AugThe Portfolio Built To Survive Every Crash | Jared DillianJared Dillian makes the case for his Awesome Portfolio, which splits allocations equally across stocks, bonds, gold, cash, and real estate and has returned roughly 9% annually since 1971 with a worst-ever drawdown of 12% in 2022, compared to the S&P 500's 57% collapse from 2007 to 2009. He argues the return sacrifice is worth it because most investors sell at the lows and permanently destroy compounding.Wed 5 AugThe Portfolio Built To Survive Every Crash | Jared DillianJared Dillian makes the case for his Awesome Portfolio, which splits allocations equally across stocks, bonds, gold, cash, and real estate. Backtested from 1971, it returns roughly 9% annually against the S&P 500's 11%, but its worst drawdown was 12% in 2022 versus the S&P 500's 57% collapse from 2007 to 2009. Dillian argues that gap is irrelevant because most investors liquidate near lows and permanently destroy compounding.Mon 3 AugThe AI Unwind And Warsh's Long-End Gamble | Weekly RoundupThis week's discussion centers on two interlocking market events: the forced liquidation of Ash Branner's AI-focused fund, which had grown from roughly 225 million dollars to billions, and Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh's signal that the long end of the yield curve, not the front end, is where policy tightening should be directed.Mon 3 AugThe AI Unwind And Warsh's Long-End Gamble | Weekly RoundupThis week's discussion centers on two interconnected market dislocations: the forced liquidation of Ash Branner's AI-focused fund, which had grown from roughly 225 million dollars to billions before Citadel's Ken Griffin stepped in as the single buyer of its entire public and private holdings including Anthropic, and Kevin Warsh's signal that the Fed intends to let long-end yields reprice to fair market value, a shift expected to add 50 to 100 basis points to long-end rates and pressure equities over.Wed 22 JulAI Efficiency Is Repricing The Compute Market | Steve HouSteve Hou of Silicon Data makes the case that futures contracts and derivatives for physical AI compute would let cloud providers hedge capacity risk currently embedded in equities and fixed income, enabling bolder infrastructure commitments while giving new entrants the revenue certainty lenders require. The GPU forward curve shifted from backwardation in late 2024 to a flatter contango shape by March 2025, with one-year contract prices rising monotonically even as headlines suggested oversupply.Wed 22 JulAI Efficiency Is Repricing The Compute Market | Steve HouSteve Hou makes the case that AI compute risk is mispriced because it is currently embedded in equity and fixed income rather than traded directly, and that Silicon Data's futures and derivatives market would let cloud providers and data centers hedge that exposure efficiently.Fri 17 JulThe AI Unwind Is Forcing A Historic Market Rotation | Weekly RoundupThis week's discussion centers on the AI unwind that has rolled sequentially from the Magnificent 7 into semiconductors and now into Korean retail markets, with hosts arguing the move may still be in its early innings given that levered retail drove the final 30 to 40 percent of momentum and value buyers remain far from stepping in.Fri 17 JulThe AI Unwind Is Forcing A Historic Market Rotation | Weekly RoundupThis week's discussion centers on the AI-driven market unwind, which the hosts describe as likely in its early innings, with the S&P 500's roughly 40% Mag 7 and 20% semiconductor concentration framing a bubble they consider larger than the 2000 dot-com episode. Three-month implied correlation remains sub-10, mirroring the summer 2024 yen volatility regime, and momentum unwinds historically require significant positioning to clear before any recovery can be trusted.Wed 8 JulThink Like Everyone Else, Lose Like Everyone Else | Brent DonnellyBrent Donnelly argues that consensus thinking produces consensus results, and since most traders lose money, independent thinking is a prerequisite for edge rather than an advantage. He extends this to large language models, observing that tools like Gemini Deep Research aggregate all available information to produce the most vanilla possible view on any stock or macro topic, which he treats as a signal rather than a flaw, applying Keynes's beauty contest principle to identify narratives not yet fully priced in.Wed 8 JulThink Like Everyone Else, Lose Like Everyone Else | Brent DonnellyBrent Donnelly opens with the argument that thinking like the consensus produces consensus results, and since most traders lose money, conformity is simply a structured path to the same outcome. He maps the tight aggressive poker framework onto trading discipline, using Jesse Livermore and Victor Niederhoffer as cautionary examples of skill destroyed by risk management failure, and argues that approaching ruin enough times guarantees eventually reaching it.Fri 3 JulThe AI Trade Is Finally Cracking | Weekly RoundupThe yen carry trade unwind delivered a four standard deviation move in the momentum factor, with AI semiconductors in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan reversing two to three months of price action in days. Amazon signaling potential capex cuts and a reported memory efficiency breakthrough from an OpenAI spinout accelerated the AI trade crack, which was already fragile given that roughly 30 percent of hyperscaler income earlier this year came from marking up AI lab private valuations.Fri 3 JulThe AI Trade Is Finally Cracking | Weekly RoundupThis week's discussion centers on what the hosts describe as a structural crack in the AI semiconductor trade, driven not by fundamentals but by extreme momentum positioning, roughly 100 billion dollars in triple-levered ETFs, and a single tweet claiming a memory efficiency breakthrough from a team spun out of OpenAI.Mon 29 JunHow To Trade The New Warsh Fed | Bob SheehanBob Sheehan makes the case that Kevin Warsh has effectively removed the Fed put that traders have relied on through every prior chair back to at least Yellen, creating a genuinely new regime for much of the market. Warsh cut forward guidance language roughly in half, abstained from the dot plot, and may eliminate press conferences, forcing rate expectations to become more dynamic and harder to price.Mon 29 JunHow To Trade The New Warsh Fed | Bob SheehanBob Sheehan, founder of Lighthouse Macro and former manager of a roughly one to one point two billion dollar large cap macro equity strategy at Bank of America, argues that the Fed put is dead or meaningfully diminished under Kevin Warsh, whose hawkish history and reduction of Fed guidance from approximately 340 to 170 words signals a structural regime shift.Fri 26 JunIs The Fed Panic Already Fading? | Weekly RoundupThis week's discussion centers on whether the Federal Reserve's hawkish posture is already losing credibility, with one-year breakeven inflation near 2 percent making Bank of America's forecast of three rate hikes look implausible. Powell's recent comments are read as implicit guidance designed to avoid hiking, and if the Fed skips July, falling inflation and election-year caution likely keep rates unchanged through year-end.Fri 26 JunIs The Fed Panic Already Fading? | Weekly RoundupThe hosts make the case that peak inflation and peak growth are passing through without tipping into recession, and that the Fed, scarred by its transitory inflation mistake, is effectively locked into a hawkish hold for the rest of the year. Kevin Warsh is read as implicitly signaling inaction while referencing balance sheet policy repeatedly, which the hosts argue carries more weight than front-end rate moves given historically suppressed long-end yields.Fri 19 JunA New Era Is Beginning In Markets | Weekly RoundupKevin Warsh's first FOMC meeting produced a dramatically shortened Fed statement with roughly 80 percent of prior text cut, closing only with the phrase "the committee will deliver price stability," a posture speakers argue was primarily a political signal of Fed independence from Trump rather than a genuine inflation call.Fri 19 JunA New Era Is Beginning In Markets | Weekly RoundupKevin Warsh's first FOMC meeting is being read as a turning point, with speakers arguing the hawkish dot plot represents peak hawkishness rather than a genuine tightening signal, partly because Warsh did not submit his own dot and non-voting members drove the narrative.Fri 19 JunA New Era Is Beginning In Markets | Weekly RoundupKevin Warsh's first FOMC meeting as Fed Chair produced a hawkish surprise in which he cut roughly 80 percent of the FOMC statement and declined to submit his own dot, leaving the committee to drive projections that now price in two rate hikes by mid-2027. Speakers argue the Fed is reacting months late to data already showing oil down 30 percent and wages cooling to three percent, and predict July CPI will confirm peak hawkishness has passed.Wed 17 JunThe Warsh Fed Will Look Nothing Like Before | Joseph WangKevin Warsh's first FOMC statement as Fed chair delivered a hawkish surprise, with the phrase "the committee will deliver price stability" drawing comparisons to Powell's Jackson Hole speech and pushing front-end and belly rates higher without a single vote dissenting.Wed 17 JunThe Warsh Fed Will Look Nothing Like Before | Joseph WangKevin Warsh's first FOMC statement as Fed chair was deliberately brief and hawkish, with the closing line "the committee will deliver price stability" read by Joseph Wang as a signal comparable in tone to Powell's Jackson Hole speech. Without any actual rate change, the statement alone pushed two-year yields higher, rallied the dollar, and sold off equities and gold.Fri 12 JunPolicy Intervention Is Keeping The Bull Market Alive | Weekly RoundupThe Trump administration is described as running a deliberate playbook of stoking fear around geopolitical or currency events and then reversing course, crushing volatility and triggering a predictable sequence where the dollar falls, gold rips, real rates flatten, and AI and growth assets surge. This pattern has repeated roughly four times recently, with Treasury Secretary Bessent managing dollar-yen timing around the 160 USDJPY threshold.Fri 12 JunBlockworks Acquires MessariBlockworks is acquiring Messari in a deal the participants frame as the culmination of a roughly four-year pivot from media and events into data, creating what they describe as the largest crypto dataset by a wide margin covering 40,000 assets. The combined three-layer stack targets issuers and underwriters of on-chain assets, with AI agents identified as Messari's fastest-growing customer segment.Fri 12 JunBlockworks Acquires MessariBlockworks announced its acquisition of Messari on a special Thursday episode, framing the deal as the capstone of a four-year shift from media and events into data. The combination pairs Messari's breadth across 40,000 assets with Blockworks' deep protocol coverage, targeting financial institutions that cannot yet fully participate in tokenization because they lack tools to monitor assets, track on-chain users, or verify protocol financials.Fri 12 JunPolicy Intervention Is Keeping The Bull Market Alive | Weekly RoundupThe Trump administration has been running a repeating playbook of escalating rhetoric, allowing volatility to spike, and then walking back aggressive stances to generate violent rallies, a sequence that has occurred roughly four times recently and that one speaker is trading by holding leveraged long futures into the midterms. Each episode produces a predictable chain where the dollar drops, gold rallies, real rates flatten, and high-yield assets rise.Thu 11 JunWarsh Must Choose The Dollar Or The Bond Market | Luke GromenLuke Gromen argues that Kevin Warsh faces an unavoidable binary choice between sacrificing the dollar or sacrificing the bond market, and that Wall Street consensus misreads him as hawkish.Thu 11 JunWarsh Must Choose The Dollar Or The Bond Market | Luke GromenKevin Warsh is expected to arrive at the Fed as a hawk, but Luke Gromen argues Warsh will ultimately implement a bond market put and buy bonds despite prior statements against it, because US debt at 122 percent of GDP with deficits running near 6 percent leaves no alternative. The Iran war has pushed headline CPI above 4 percent and threatens to widen the deficit toward 8 to 10 percent, which Gromen says discards Bessent's fiscal plan entirely.Wed 3 JunWhy This Economy Refuses To Break | David CervantesDavid Cervantes argues the economy refuses to break because two forces are pumping money through the system simultaneously: federal deficits running at 6 to 7 percent of GDP and AI capital expenditure approaching one trillion dollars, with Google's roughly 80 billion dollar equity issuance marking the latest phase of that buildout.Wed 3 JunWhy This Economy Refuses To Break | David CervantesDavid Cervantes makes the case that the US economy is structurally insulated from recession by three interlocking forces: federal fiscal deficits running at 6 to 7 percent of GDP that translate directly into private sector surpluses, an AI capital expenditure buildout approaching one trillion dollars now being funded through equity issuance after exhausting free cash flow and debt markets, and informal wealth transfers from baby boomers to adult children.Fri 29 MayHow To Trade The AI Productivity Boom | Weekly RoundupThis episode centers on how to position around the AI productivity boom while navigating a macro environment defined by persistent inflation, a dovish Fed, and deteriorating consumer conditions. Speakers argue that AI is driving a real productivity expansion but is widening wealth inequality and straining the social contract, making redistributive political outcomes increasingly likely.Fri 29 MayHow To Trade The AI Productivity Boom | Weekly RoundupThis week's discussion centers on how to position around the AI productivity boom and a fragile equity market sitting on historically cheap hedges. The hosts argue that AI infrastructure spending is real but the gains are accruing to a narrow group, with capital being pulled out of crypto and into data centers in a dynamic reminiscent of how Silicon Valley drained gold miners around 2012.