September 2025 DDD

[ducati916]

So looking a little toppy.


The big picture:


The real threat to the U.S. in the future is not China, but rather the U.S. itself. The U.S. will bury itself. That’s because it has not yet realized that a big era is coming and the financial capitalism that the U.S. represents will reach its peak and then start falling. On the one hand, the U.S. has already taken full advantage of benefits that capital generates. On the other hand, via the technological innovation that the U.S. leads, the U.S. pushes the Internet, big data, and cloud computing to an extreme. These tools will eventually become the forces that end financial capitalism.


Taobao.com and tmall.com, both under the Alibaba company, registered 50.7 billion yuan (US$8.2 billion) in sales on November 11, 2014. A few weeks later, the total Internet sales plus the in-store sales in the U.S. market in the three-day Thanks-giving weekend was only 40.7 billion yuan (US$6.6 billion). The 50.7 billion yuan is only the sales for one-day on Alibaba, not including 163.com, qq.com, jd.com, and other online stores in China, nor including any physical store sales.


All Alibaba’s sales were done via Alipay (an electronic payment system). What does Alipay mean? It means that currency is out of the trade platform. The U.S. hegemony is based on its dollar. What is the dollar? It is a currency. In the future, when we stop using currency to complete sales, the traditional currency will be useless. Will the empire that is established on currency still exist? That is the question that the Americans should think about.




Full:https://chinascope.org/archives/6458


What makes sense is that the Chinese payment systems, which brings together Chinese finance and Chinese cloud capital in a most effective way, just visit WeChat and you'll see what I mean, is a mortal danger for the monopoly of the dollar. The war in Ukraine did something quite interesting. This superhighway of all singing, all dancing, digital payments, Chinese payments, the WeChat and the digital currency of the Central Bank of China, that was already there.


But it's like building a superhighway. You can imagine five lanes on each side and a big spanking new beautiful highway with no cars on it. Because if you were a capitalist, even if you're a Chinese capitalist, you still wanted to use a dollar. Because if you produce aluminum in Shenzhen, you want to sell most of it to the Americans. So you want to sell it for dollars, and then you take your dollars and you take it to Wall Street and you buy American bonds and you buy real estate in Miami and so on.


So the Chinese capitalists didn't even want to use this superhighway of payments. But the moment the United States together with a European confiscated 450 billion worth of Russian money... I'm not judging this. I'm not saying they should have done it or not have done it. I'm simply saying they did it.


So imagine you are a Saudi Arabian Sheikh or the Emir of some Emirate or some Indonesian bigwig. And you think, "Oh my God, they confiscated 450 billion smackers because they didn't like their policies. Well, they may not like me tomorrow, because I'm not the best guy in the world." They know that, right? "Well, maybe I should hedge my bets, not put all my money in the dollar system. I will put most of my money in the dollar system, but I will put some in the Chinese superhighway."


The Americans see that. The smart people in Washington see it as a serious threat because if they lose the monopoly of the dollar system, of the payment system internationally, that's it. The United States is finished.

Full:

Interestingly it has been taken down.

I have been following the whole Fed drama all week and the nonsense about Fed independence yada, yada.

The issue is very simple: Trump and the Treasury need lower rates yesterday and Powell is not playing ball. Look at the West, producers of debt:



Long end rates are rising even in the face of Central Bank cuts.

Which means that Trump and Bessent will need to continue to issue new debt at the short end. They have a cunning plan, which will also essentially end-the-Fed in the short term and allow the Treasury to self fund, at least for a while.


jog on
duc

 

[Sean K]

View attachment 207323View attachment 207322View attachment 207321View attachment 207319View attachment 207318


So looking a little toppy.


The big picture:


The real threat to the U.S. in the future is not China, but rather the U.S. itself. The U.S. will bury itself. That’s because it has not yet realized that a big era is coming and the financial capitalism that the U.S. represents will reach its peak and then start falling. On the one hand, the U.S. has already taken full advantage of benefits that capital generates. On the other hand, via the technological innovation that the U.S. leads, the U.S. pushes the Internet, big data, and cloud computing to an extreme. These tools will eventually become the forces that end financial capitalism.


Taobao.com and tmall.com, both under the Alibaba company, registered 50.7 billion yuan (US$8.2 billion) in sales on November 11, 2014. A few weeks later, the total Internet sales plus the in-store sales in the U.S. market in the three-day Thanks-giving weekend was only 40.7 billion yuan (US$6.6 billion). The 50.7 billion yuan is only the sales for one-day on Alibaba, not including 163.com, qq.com, jd.com, and other online stores in China, nor including any physical store sales.


All Alibaba’s sales were done via Alipay (an electronic payment system). What does Alipay mean? It means that currency is out of the trade platform. The U.S. hegemony is based on its dollar. What is the dollar? It is a currency. In the future, when we stop using currency to complete sales, the traditional currency will be useless. Will the empire that is established on currency still exist? That is the question that the Americans should think about.




Full:https://chinascope.org/archives/6458


What makes sense is that the Chinese payment systems, which brings together Chinese finance and Chinese cloud capital in a most effective way, just visit WeChat and you'll see what I mean, is a mortal danger for the monopoly of the dollar. The war in Ukraine did something quite interesting. This superhighway of all singing, all dancing, digital payments, Chinese payments, the WeChat and the digital currency of the Central Bank of China, that was already there.


But it's like building a superhighway. You can imagine five lanes on each side and a big spanking new beautiful highway with no cars on it. Because if you were a capitalist, even if you're a Chinese capitalist, you still wanted to use a dollar. Because if you produce aluminum in Shenzhen, you want to sell most of it to the Americans. So you want to sell it for dollars, and then you take your dollars and you take it to Wall Street and you buy American bonds and you buy real estate in Miami and so on.


So the Chinese capitalists didn't even want to use this superhighway of payments. But the moment the United States together with a European confiscated 450 billion worth of Russian money... I'm not judging this. I'm not saying they should have done it or not have done it. I'm simply saying they did it.


So imagine you are a Saudi Arabian Sheikh or the Emir of some Emirate or some Indonesian bigwig. And you think, "Oh my God, they confiscated 450 billion smackers because they didn't like their policies. Well, they may not like me tomorrow, because I'm not the best guy in the world." They know that, right? "Well, maybe I should hedge my bets, not put all my money in the dollar system. I will put most of my money in the dollar system, but I will put some in the Chinese superhighway."


The Americans see that. The smart people in Washington see it as a serious threat because if they lose the monopoly of the dollar system, of the payment system internationally, that's it. The United States is finished.

Full:

Interestingly it has been taken down.

I have been following the whole Fed drama all week and the nonsense about Fed independence yada, yada.

The issue is very simple: Trump and the Treasury need lower rates yesterday and Powell is not playing ball. Look at the West, producers of debt:

View attachment 207324

Long end rates are rising even in the face of Central Bank cuts.

Which means that Trump and Bessent will need to continue to issue new debt at the short end. They have a cunning plan, which will also essentially end-the-Fed in the short term and allow the Treasury to self fund, at least for a while.


jog on
duc

Nice to have an early insight into September.

 

[ducati916]

Bond market remains sanguine.




USD found a short term bottom?





30yr looking closely at 5%.


For the moment $MOVE indicates all is well. However a rising USD and rising 30yr/10yr would upset the apple cart.


Bessent has indicated that stablecoins are definitely part of his short term plan in allowing continued roll-over of debt and continued deficit spending.

Here is an excerpt:


Before the emergence of stablecoins, the US Federal Reserve and the US Treasury Department always bailed out Eurodollar banking institutions when they got into trouble. A well-functioning Eurodollar market was essential to the health of the empire. But now, there is a new tool that allows Bessent to soak up those flows. At the macro level, Bessent must provide a reason for Eurodollar deposits to shift on-chain.

For example, during the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the Fed secretly lent billions of dollars to foreign banks who were short dollars because of the knock-on effects of the collapse of subprime mortgages and their associated derivatives.[2] As a result, Eurodollar depositors believe that the US government implicitly guarantees their money even though technically they are outside of the US-regulated financial system. Declaring that non-US bank branches will not receive any help from the Fed or Treasury should another financial crisis occur will redirect Eurodollar deposits into the loving hands of stablecoin issuers. If you think this is far-fetched, a strategist at Deutsche Bank wrote a piece openly questioning whether the US would weaponize dollar swap lines to force the Europeans to do what the Trump administration requires of them. You better believe Trump would love nothing more than to castrate the Eurodollar market by effectively debanking it. These same institutions debanked his family after his first term; it’s time for payback. Karma is a bitch.

Without the guarantee, Eurodollar depositors would act in their own best interest by moving funds into dollar-pegged stablecoins like USDT. Tether holds all of its assets as US bank deposits and or T-bills. By law, the US government guarantees all deposits held at the eight Too Big to Fail (TBTF) banks; ‌post the 2023 Regional Banking Crisis, the Fed and Treasury effectively guaranteed all deposits at any US bank or branch. The default risk of T-bills is nil as well because the US government will never voluntarily go bankrupt because it can always print dollars to repay T-bill holders. Therefore, stablecoin deposits are risk-free in nominal dollar terms, but now Eurodollar deposits are not.

Quickly, dollar-pegged stablecoin issuers will face an influx of $10 to $13 trillion, and subsequently purchase T-bills. The stablecoin issuer becomes a price-insensitive buyer of Buffalo Bill Bessent’s dogshit paper in ******* SIZE!

Even if Fed chairperson beta cuck towel bitch boy Powell continues to obstruct Trump’s monetary agenda by refusing to cut Fed Funds, end quantitative tightening, and restart quantitative easing, Bessent could offer T-bills at a lower rate than Fed Funds. He could do this because the stablecoin issuer must buy whatever he is selling at the yield offered if they are to earn a profit. In a few moves, Bessent gains control of the front end of the yield curve. There is no point in the Fed’s continued existence. Maybe a statue of Bessent in the style of “Perseus with the Head of Medusa” by Cellini will tower over some square in Washington D.C. entitled “Bessent with the Head of The Creature From Jekyll Island”.


Full:https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/buffalo-bill

Essentially we are living through a moment in history that will see a total reset of the monetary system.

Now you can play this:

(a) with gold;
(b) with BTC;
(c) with a mix of (a) and (b).

I am not a fan of BTC but I have added an IBIT ETF for BTC. I will never actually want to hold BTC, but I'll play the roll with the ETF.

This is why that the drama of 'sacking' a Fed govenor is misguided. The real issue is getting the FFR or short end close to or ZIRP so that the rollover debt and new debt can again be financed at close to free via stablecoins.

China is crushing the US. At least Trump and Bessent recognise the problem.


The markets are asleep (it would seem) to the issues and threats. Obviously the gold market is aware as it is in the early innings of a secular bull market. But the stock market seems unaware. I say unaware because the really speculative garbage is rising faster than the stuff you would really need down the road.

Are we 1999 or 2000?

Not sure, but at some point this ends badly.


jog on
duc

 

[ducati916]

What happened last week

Monday: After reporting a double beat, Workday $WDAY suffered its 3rd negative earnings reaction out of its last 4. The company is undergoing a significant restructuring, which includes reducing its workforce and acquiring other companies. The $185B software giant, Intuit $INTU, beat headline expectations but fell 5%. This negative reaction did significant technical damage, confirming a failed breakout above the prior cycle peak.

Tuesday: There weren't any S&P 500 earnings reactions to cover, so we highlighted the Chinese Technology ETF $CQQQ. The fund is decisively resolving a textbook multi-year bearish-to-bullish reversal pattern. We also covered the latest earnings reaction from PDD Holdings $PDD, and its base-on-base pattern that we think looks great.

Wednesday: There weren't any S&P 500 earnings reactions to cover, but North of the border, Canada's banking giants are stealing our attention. From Wall Street to Frankfurt to Hong Kong, financial stocks are climbing higher together. Now, the Canadian giants - the Big 5 - are joining in, and they’re doing so in spectacular fashion.

Thursday: After reporting a double, the $23B specialty retailer, Williams-Sonoma $WSM, suffered its 3rd consecutive negative earnings reaction. This company is at the forefront of Trump's Tariff War, and the market doesn't like it. The $11B packaged foods stock known for its PB&J and much more, J.M. Smucker $SJM, posted mixed results and got slammed. The price is on the cusp of resolving a multi-decade distribution pattern.

Friday: The darling of the AI Revolution, Nvidia $NVDA, crushed Wall Street's expectations again, but had a slightly negative earnings reaction. Their data center revenue is growing at an astounding 56% year-over-year. Finally, the $23B cybersecurity giant, CrowdStrike $CRWD, posted a double beat and rallied 4.6%. This reaction formed a textbook bullish engulfing candlestick and snapped a streak of 3 consecutive negative earnings reactions.

What's happening next week

​

Next week will be all about Broadcom $AVGO. The $1.4T semiconductor company reported 46% year-over-year growth in its AI semiconductor revenue last quarter. Market participants will be closely watching for signs of a slowdown or acceleration. Beyond those, we’ll also be watching: The $245B software giant, Salesforce $CRM. In apparel retail, we'll hear from Lululemon Athletica $LULU and American Eagle Outfitters $AEO. And the up-and-coming Chinese EV producer, NIO $NIO. In addition, we'll hear from one of 2025's hottest IPOs, Figma $FIG. Since the stock's brief post-IPO pump, shareholders have been aggressively dumping, pushing the price to new all-time lows. It's set to be another eventful week, so there will be plenty to cover in The Daily Beat. Now, let’s dig into the setups we'll be monitoring closest next week.

Here's the setup in AVGO ahead of Thursday's earnings report

​

Broadcom is expected to post $15.83B in revenue and EPS of $1.66 after Thursday's closing bell. Heading into the report, the price is stuck below a key Fibonacci extension level from its over 40% decline earlier this year. While it wouldn't surprise us to see a negative reaction after seeing how the market responded to Nvidia's $NVDA report last week, we still love this name over longer timeframes. Since going public in 2009 at 1.65, the share price has increased to nearly 300, growing at a staggering 38.34% CAGR. Additionally, late last year, the stock had its best earnings reaction ever following a blockbuster report. That week also marked the best one-week changeever relative to NVDA, which we believe was the initiation of a brand-new uptrend compared to its $4.2T peer. We think this is the new leader of the semiconductor industry.

Here are the past 3 years of earnings results & reactions for AVGO

​

Over the past three years, Broadcom has consistently crushed Wall Street estimates and been rewarded for it. In its last 2 reports, the year-over-year EPS growth accelerated to over 40%, and the market is expecting similar growth this quarter. Shareholders have been rewarded for 2 of the last 3 earnings reports since the historic reaction we mentioned earlier. The bottom line is that this stock tends to deliver, but the market’s reaction will likely hinge on what's happening in the broader market. As Alfonso pointed out earlier this month, semiconductors are hitting resistance. Whether or not that resistance holds is to be determined. We'll learn more about the group this week with AVGO's report after Thursday's closing bell and the reaction on Friday.

Here's the setup in CRM ahead of Wednesday's earnings report

​

Salesforce is projected to report $10.14B in revenue and EPS of $2.78 after Wednesday's closing bell. Technically, the stock is carving out a textbook multi-year distribution pattern. A close below 226 would shift the path of least resistance from sideways to lower for the foreseeable future. On a relative basis, the price has already resolved a similar top compared to the broader market. These new multi-year lows in relative terms are supportive of new lows in absolute terms. We think Wednesday's report could be the catalyst for the bears to take control of this name decisively.

Here are the past 3 years of earnings results & reactions for CRM

​

As you can see, Salesforce's top and bottom-line growth have been decelerating recently. Confirming the bearish shift in fundamentals are back-to-back negative earnings reactions. This isn't the only trad-software name that's struggling. In Monday's Daily Beat, we highlighted the negative earnings reactions in Workday $WDAY and Intuit $INTU. The market is telling us loud and clear that AI is killing companies in the software industrial complex that are failing to innovate. With the technicals confirming the negative fundamental outlook, we expect the market to punish CRM for its earnings report after the closing bell on Wednesday.

jog on
duc

 

[ducati916]

Full:https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/an-emergency-non-emergency-post





Full:https://www.wsj.com/business/retail...8?st=Q73vm6&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink






Full:https://www.wsj.com/business/retail...8?st=Q73vm6&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink



Centuries' worth of experience walked out of key government agencies this summer, including high-level departures from the CDC, Pentagon and intelligence community just in the past week.
Why it matters: President Trump and his allies believe the "Deep State," scientific establishment and federal bureaucracy were overdue for a purge. They're ushering in a government in which the officials maintaining nuclear weapons, monitoring medical trials or guarding state secrets have shorter resumes and smaller staffs — likely for many years to come.




Driving the news: Three of the CDC's top scientists resigned this week after director Susan Monarez was fired, with hundreds of staffers staging a walkout in support of their outgoing colleagues and opposition to HHS leadership.

• Demetre Daskalakis, who resigned as the CDC's vaccine chief, claimed Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his team were manipulating data "to achieve a political end."
• He also warned that the hollowing out of agencies like his would leave the U.S. ill prepared for future public health emergencies, telling the NYT: "We really are losing the people who know how to do this."
• Kennedy, who once called the CDC a "cesspool of corruption," said Thursday that "there's a lot of trouble at CDC, and it's going to require getting rid of some people over the long term... to change the institutional culture."

Zoom out: Around 3,000 CDC staffers have resigned or been fired since January. Agencies like the FDA and National Institutes of Health have also shed thousands of staff, including many highly trained scientists.

• The exodus of expertise has also affected roles focused on cyber defense, nuclear safety, extreme weather forecasting and disaster response.

Departures over the last week or so from America's national security agencies have been particularly eyebrow-raising.

• Defense Intelligence Agency director Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse was fired, Doug Beck abruptly resigned as the head of the Pentagon's Silicon Valley-based Defense Innovation Unit, and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin retired two years ahead of schedule.
• The list of exits since Trump took office includes the heads of the Joint Chiefs, the National Security Agency, the Coast Guard and the Naval Reserve, as well as senior leaders from the Air Force, Navy and NATO — all career officers with decades of service, Axios' Colin Demarest reports.
• While the administration hasn't provided explanations for each individual ouster, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has railed against "woke" generals and emphasized Trump's authority to elevate leaders he trusts.

Friction point: When Intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard announced she was slashing her staff by 40% last week, she called the intelligence community "bloated" and "rife with abuse of power, unauthorized leaks of classified intelligence, and politicized weaponization of intelligence."

• One outgoing veteran of the intelligence community told Axios that under Gabbard's leadership, experience garnered suspicion rather than respect. "It just means you have been brainwashed for 30 years — sucking off the teat of the American people for decades."
• The official contended that Gabbard's tenure had been fraught with mistakes — like her alleged unmasking of an undercover CIA operative in an X post last week — that could have been avoided if she trusted the experienced officials around her.
• That view chimes with comments Daskalakis made Thursday on Kennedy's leadership: "I am not sure who the Secretary is listening to, but it is quite certainly not to us."
• The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The bottom line: "I've been going to these going-away parties, it feels like every week," another long-time intelligence official told Axios. "You look at what we're losing ... It's depressing."

• For Trump and his team, it seems, the sentiment is different: Good riddance.

China and India:https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/donald-trumps-biggest-dumbest-personalist

Full:https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/24/...ytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Bringing down the hammer on financial firms that are helping Russia’s war machine has become only more complicated as the war in Ukraine has progressed. Cut off from much of the Western world, Russia has forged deeper ties with India and China, large economies that provide an economic lifeline.

“There are many companies around the world that have violated secondary sanctions threats,” said Edward Fishman, a senior research scholar at Columbia University and a former Treasury Department official. But, he added, “do you really want to strain your relationship with the U.A.E. or China?”

If sanctions were placed on major Chinese banks, international trade would slow considerably. Many American companies would be unable to pay Chinese factories for goods or receive payments for their own exports. Supply chains for everything from electronics to pharmaceuticals could freeze up, sending prices soaring for American consumers. This calculus has made Chinese banks nearly “unsanctionable,” according to Martin Chorzempa, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

“Sanctioning a large Chinese financial institution,” he said, “could lead to global financial instability.”

Exemptions and Evasions

There was a time when being on the sanctions list was like a financial death sentence. The list, a 3,000-page document on the Treasury Department’s website, dates back to the 1960s.

Not only are the entities barred from doing business with the United States, they cannot interact with banks that use U.S. dollars. Because the U.S. dollar is the currency most widely used for international transactions, that ban effectively cuts them off from the global financial system.

There was a time when being on the sanctions list was like a financial death sentence. The list, a 3,000-page document on the Treasury Department’s website, dates back to the 1960s.

Not only are the entities barred from doing business with the United States, they cannot interact with banks that use U.S. dollars. Because the U.S. dollar is the currency most widely used for international transactions, that ban effectively cuts them off from the global financial system.

Twenty years ago, the Office of Foreign Asset Control mostly dealt with small-time violators, handing out fines that averaged a few thousand dollars for offenses like smuggling Cuban cigars, according to an analysis of government records.

But then America’s sanctions program grew from a niche tool into a centerpiece of foreign policy. From 2002 to 2019, the average settlement grew 400-fold. Multibillion-dollar penalties against global financial institutions that facilitated sanctions evasion — even inadvertently — became normal. In 2014, the French bank BNP Paribas paid the U.S. nearly $9 billion for having processed transactions on behalf of Sudanese, Iranian and Cuban entities.

The United States can investigate banks that are suspected of violating sanctions, a process that can take years to complete. Such cases may end in steep fines, but the far greater threat is the Treasury’s power to cut a bank off from the dollar.

Sanctions were imposed on Russia’s VTB Bank in February 2022, and it was kicked off the interbank payment system called SWIFT. SWIFT is the global messaging network that enables banks worldwide to communicate and process international money transfers, and without access, VTB should have been isolated from global finance.

However, the bank, which has expanded its China presence in recent years, seems to have found at least one workaround: It advertised that account holders could transfer up to 1 million rubles, or roughly $10,000, daily into their accounts on Alipay, a giant Chinese payment platform. VTB said there would be “instant enrollment” and funds available within one business day.

This could create a back door into the global financial system. Russian customers move rubles from VTB to Alipay and, once in Alipay, those funds can flow anywhere internationally, effectively washing the rubles into the broader economy and neutralizing a major Western sanction.

Ant Group, the owner of Alipay, denied that it had any ties to VTB. After The Times sought comment from Ant and VTB, references to Alipay disappeared from VTB’s website, which now tells customers that they can transfer money to “popular Chinese wallets.” VTB did not respond to multiple requests for comment, and did not address questions about whether the bank relies on Chinese intermediaries to facilitate the transfers to Alipay.

In Moscow this past April, business was humming along. Photos from Expo Electronica, a large electronics trade show featuring more than 600 companies, showed exhibition booths displaying advanced semiconductors, with LED screens advertising the exact chips the United States has tried to block from export to Russia. A Russian Ministry of Defense delegation, led by Vasily Elistratov, head of the Kremlin’s artificial intelligence development program, walked the convention floor chatting with vendors.

Among the exhibitors was Hong Kong-based Allchips, a semiconductor dealer that had been added to the U.S. sanctions list eight months earlier. Allchips sells components used in cruise missiles that Russia fires at Ukrainian cities.

When asked how the company accepts payment, an Allchips sales representative, whose contact information was listed on the company LinkedIn page, said via WhatsApp that the company accepted payment in dollars and Chinese renminbi through Alipay, or through bank transfer to the company’s VTB account.




Deep Value:https://humbledollar.com/2025/08/how-to-beat-the-market/

• I was back at the NYSE this week.
• It's a magical place where great things happen.
• Show up, engage, do the work...

It felt good to be back on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange this week.

The building had a calmness to it – not surprising, since this was the final stretch of summer.

Sure, the calendar says summer runs until the autumnal equinox on September 22. But, on Wall Street, everyone knows Labor Day is the cutoff.

The kids are back in school, portfolio managers are back from the Hamptons, and trading desks finally get busy again.

That's just how the rhythm of the street works.

But here's what stood out: While everyone was easing into vacation mode, the market quietly delivered one of its strongest summers in four decades.

According to FactSet, the S&P 500 just logged its third-best Memorial Day–to–Labor Day run in the last 40 years.

Magic Happens at the NYSE​

The New York Stock Exchange is one of the most beautiful buildings in New York City.

As far as I'm concerned, this isn't just another landmark–it's the most important building in all of capitalism.

Think about what it represents. It has always been a place that brings people together.

I spent four or five hours there on Wednesday trading ideas and debating market trends with investors from all over the country.

Was the Uber (UBER) into the city overpriced? Probably.

Were the cocktails after the bell too expensive? Definitely.

Were the ribeyes and Bordeaux a bit outrageous? Absolutely.

But the value of those conversations will more than pay for themselves. You have to get out there. You have to listen.

Networking may be a lost art for some, but for those who still practice it, it's a massive edge.

It's Football Season​

In America, once football kicks off, summer's officially done. The weather even turned cooler this weekend.

September has a reputation as a portfolio killer–the worst month of the year for stocks historically. But this time might be different.

According to my friend Ari Wald, head of Technical Analysis at Oppenheimer, September has historically been positive on average when it starts the month above its 200-day moving average.

And that's exactly where we are heading into Tuesday.

On top of that, history shows the September-to-December period tends to run stronger under second-term presidents. Another tailwind for this year.

So, if you're going to be bearish just because it's September, you're going to need a better reason. Seasonality alone isn't it.

My time at the NYSE this week was a reminder: The market rewards those who show up, engage, and do the work.

The lost art of networking is leaving a lot of people behind. Don't let it leave you behind too.

Get out there.

​

This Week in Everybody's Wrong​

On Monday, we talked about how investors must separate what we want from what we have.

In other words, you have to play the cards you're dealt.

Indeed, the only way to make money is to trade in the market that exists.

On Tuesday, we addressed the people who love to slap labels on me depending on where we are in the market cycle.

When stocks are trending higher, I'm often called a permabull, but when stocks are trending lower, I'm often called a permabear.

Of course, I'm neither permabull nor permabear – I follow data, price, and trend...

On Wednesday, we remembered that Financials make the world go 'round.

That's based on a lot of personal experience, including the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-09.

Here's why regional bank rotation is what to watch right now.

On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, I invited my friend Matt Milner to share the secrets of private investing with you

Matt has sold several startups of his own, and he and his business partners own stakes in more than 50 private companies, including SpaceX and xAI.

We'll continue to share ideas and opportunities such as this with you as they come across our desk.

Have a great Sunday.

We'll see you Monday morning...





LOL.

What this essentially means is that the US has belatedly realised that China holds the whip hand.

With deficits already out the arse, this means inflation as the US will need to print dollars to buy commodities. Bull market in commodities anyone?




jog on
duc