Curt Mills pointed out that if Iranian ballistic missiles are Trump’s red line—as he stated today—then “we’re going to war tonight.”

“If Israel really didn’t need the United States, what is Netanyahu doing here days before the New Year… demanding potential strikes on Iranian ICBM missiles, not nuclear weapons. The goalposts have already moved from that.”

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No one wants defensive stocks:

Global defensive stocks are now just 17% of world market cap, near the lowest since the 2000 Dot-Com Bubble burst.

This percentage has fallen -7 points since the end of the 2022 bear market.

To put this differently, consumer staples, health care, and utilities have materially underperformed the broader market over the last few years.

This has been fueled by the outsized gains in the US technology sector.

A similar pattern occurred during the 1990s, while the opposite took place during the 2008 Financial Crisis, when global defensive stocks outperformed.

Defensive sectors are lagging.

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Gold’s market cap is down as much as the entire market cap of Bitcoin today

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OBSERVATION: I have a sneaking suspicion that Minnesota counties are using a broken CAPTCHA system on their open records portals on purpose. To get the portal to accept my requests I'm having to enter the CAPTCHA 10-20 times

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Hedge funds are extremely bearish on the Japanese Yen:

Leveraged funds held ~85,000 contracts of net short positions on the Yen in the week ending December 14th, the 2nd-highest since July 2024.

This marks the 2nd consecutive week of heavily bearish positioning, following ~92,000 net short contracts recorded in the week ending December 9th.

Short positions have gradually accumulated since July as the US Dollar has strengthened against the yen.

This comes as the gap between US and Japanese rates remains large, at ~3.0 percentage points, limiting support for the currency despite the Bank of Japan's rate hikes.

Additionally, real interest rates in Japan remain deeply negative, as inflation continues to exceed policy rates, discouraging investors from holding yen-denominated assets.

A similar situation was observed last year, when the USD/JPY currency pair rose above 160, prompting the Ministry of Finance to intervene in July 2024 to defend the domestic currency.

The yen is back under pressure.

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There’s house and senate versions.

The Senate wants to give money to the “Creative Economy” through the National Endowments for the Arts/Humanities.

How about artists go let rich patrons diddle them like the old days? Pay for your own money laundering trash.

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"Leave me alone!" Woman confronted by bystanders after driving on sidewalk, crashing into buildings in Atlanta.

When confronted by the crowd she tries to continue driving before saying "I'm a woman" (we know, you drove into a building...)

She's eventually arrested.

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Had the Somali fraud taken place in the U.K., posting about “learing” would be a criminal offense

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Most arguments in favor of pit bulls are lies, distortions, or childishly saying 'I should be able own anything I want!'

Another bad argument is that most of them are fine.

By the same token, most SIG Sauer P320s are fine and will never hurt anyone. Using one is still unwise!

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We didn't appreciate her enough.

She knew about the Somalis before all of us and was trying to warn everyone.

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Bitcoin is one of the most important technological disruptions of the past 1,000 years

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