Over the past decade, every major fiat currency has lost more than 98% of its value against Bitcoin.

The Japanese yen recorded the worst performance, declining by approximately 99.4% versus Bitcoin.

The Swiss franc performed the best among major fiat currencies—yet it still lost nearly 98.8% of its value relative to Bitcoin.

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@RezaMacroEdge

#Bitcoin — Bearish Bias

The current market structure still suggests downside potential in my view. My primary scenario is a continuation of the correction toward lower levels, unless price breaks and holds above the invalidation zone, which would invalidate the bearish thesis. This is a scenario, not a certainty.

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@RezaMacroEdge

Bitcoin’s recent rallies are still lacking meaningful spot demand.

A large part of the recent upside has been driven by the futures market and leveraged positioning

rather than genuine spot buying.
Historical market cycles suggest that the strongest and most sustainable Bitcoin rallies tend to occur when both spot and futures demand rise simultaneously.

For now, one important piece of the equation is still missing: Real demand from the spot market.

Until we see that demand return, I remain cautious about the strength and sustainability of the current rally.

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@RezaMacroEdge

How Much Do Professional Traders Really Make?

One question almost every trader eventually asks is: “How much do professional traders typically make per year?”

If you spend enough time on social media, you’ll probably come across some very impressive numbers. But once we step away from Instagram and Telegram and look at actual data and academic research, the picture becomes quite different. First of all, most traders are not profitable.

One well-known study examined the performance of 66,465 traders. The investors who traded the most earned an average annual return of just 11.4%, while the market returned 17.9% over the same period.

In other words, trading more did not necessarily lead to higher returns. In this sample, it actually caused investors to give up a significant portion of the market’s return. Barber & Odean

But that’s only the beginning. In a large study of day traders in the Brazilian futures market, researchers examined people who started day trading between 2013 and 2015.

Among those who continued for more than 300 trading days:

97% lost money

Only 1.1% earned more than the minimum wage

Just 0.5% earned more than the starting salary of a bank employee Chague et al.

These numbers carry an important message: Having a few successful trades does not make you a profitable trader.

What matters is the ability to generate a positive result consistently, after trading costs. But does that mean nobody can actually make money from trading? No.

In fact, research suggests that a very small group of traders can achieve positive and persistent performance. Even great traders are wrong most of the time There’s an interesting lesson from the world of macro trading.

In an article about risk management and position sizing, Alfonso Peccatiello refers to the experience of Steve Cohen. According to that account, even his best trader was right only about 63% of the time.

For many professional traders, the success rate was closer to 50–55%.
So if a trader is right only 55% of the time, how can they make money?

That’s where something more important than win rate comes into play.

Suppose you lose an average of 1 unit when you’re wrong, but make an average of 2 or 3 units when you’re right.

In that case, you don’t need to be right all the time. So what is a professional trader really trying to do?

Not predict correctly all the time.
They simply need to lose small when they’re wrong and let their profits grow when they’re right.

And most importantly: No single trade should be capable of destroying their capital or their ability to make rational decisions.

That’s where risk management, position sizing, and drawdown control can become even more important than the analysis itself.

So, how much does a professional trader make per year?

The answer may be very different from what we see on social media: There is no single number.

We cannot scientifically claim that professional traders earn an average of 20%, 30%, or 50% per year.

What we need to know is how much risk was taken to generate that return.

Because return without risk tells only half the story. Ultimately, perhaps the most important skill in financial markets isn’t how often you’re right.

It’s this: When you’re wrong, how much do you lose? And when you’re right, how long do you allow your winners to run?

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@RezaMacroEdge

Gold’s share of total global reserves climbed from 9% in 2015, rose steadily, and then surged after 2023 to hit 26%!

In just the last two or three years, central banks around the world have been buying gold so aggressively — and the price has jumped so hard — that it looks like they’re preparing for a major storm.

Paper money has lost its old appeal. Everyone is moving toward an asset that can’t be printed and whose value can’t be reduced by government decree.

That 26% figure isn’t random. It’s a clear sign that trust in the current system is starting to crack — especially after the financial madness governments unleashed during COVID.

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@RezaMacroEdge

$40 Trillion of U.S. Debt

An interesting piece of news has come out of the U.S. Treasury. The Treasury says it plans to increase buybacks of long-term Treasury bonds.

So what does that mean?

Very simply: when investors become less willing to hold long-term bonds, prices fall and yields rise. And that’s not good news for the U.S. government.

Higher rates mean higher debt-servicing costs, creating a dangerous cycle:

More debt → higher interest costs → larger deficits → more debt

So the Treasury wants to reduce pressure in the long-term bond market by buying back some of those bonds.

But there’s a catch.

To finance these operations, the Treasury could rely more heavily on short-term debt—effectively replacing part of its long-term debt with short-term debt.

That’s a double-edged sword. It may ease pressure today, but it also changes the structure of the debt.

And this is where things get interesting for the Federal Reserve.

The Fed wants rates high enough to fight inflation. But high rates are increasingly expensive for the U.S. government.

The higher rates stay, the larger the government’s interest bill and budget deficit become.

So as U.S. debt grows, pressure to lower interest rates also increases.

This is essentially what economists call Fiscal Dominance: when the government’s fiscal position increasingly constrains monetary policy.

There’s also a common misconception worth correcting.

Treasury buybacks do not mean the Federal Reserve is printing money right now.

Treasury buybacks are not the same as Fed QE.

But if the government increasingly needs lower rates, higher inflation, or more accommodative monetary policy to manage its debt, the story becomes very different.

And this is where gold becomes interesting to me.

The issue isn’t simply that gold is up $100 today.

The bigger question is:

How is the U.S. ultimately going to manage a $40 trillion debt burden?

Cut spending? Raise taxes? Keep rates high? Or allow inflation and nominal growth to gradually reduce the real value of the debt?

In my view, this could be one of the most important stories for markets over the next several years.

You shouldn’t look at markets only through price charts. You need to understand what’s happening underneath the price.

If we look at this realistically rather than politically, I don’t think massive monetary expansion is the base case.

More likely, the U.S. will use a combination of measures, including inflation and nominal economic growth, to gradually reduce the real burden of its debt.

Inflation is ultimately a monetary phenomenon. If the U.S. tries to “solve” its debt problem through inflation, there will be a price to pay.

The root of the problem is years of excessive credit creation and government spending.

From an economic perspective, the more rational solution would be real spending cuts, an end to chronic deficits, and allowing interest rates to be discovered by the market.

Bond yields are a price too.

When long-term Treasury yields rise, perhaps the market is telling us something. If the government uses buybacks to push those yields lower, it may be suppressing part of that signal.

The U.S. will either reduce the real burden of its debt through inflation, or grow its economy fast enough to outpace it.

And which one ultimately happens may depend heavily on how much the AI revolution actually increases economic productivity.

So which assets are likely to perform better as the real value of the dollar and dollar-denominated debt gradually declines?

For now, economic data still seems to support gold as one of the lower-risk options.

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@RezaMacroEdge

The Stock Market Isn't Supposed to Go Up All the Time

There’s an interesting statistic on the S&P 500 that gives you a pretty good perspective on market corrections.

From 1950 to 2026, the S&P 500 was at least 5% below its all-time high on 55.8% of trading days.

For deeper drawdowns:

At least 10% below the high: 40.9% of days

At least 20%: 20.9% of days
At least 30%: 7.2% of days
At least 40%: just 3.1% of days

The average daily drawdown was around 10.9%.

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@RezaMacroEdge

So what does this tell us?

The market has spent a significant portion of its long-term upward journey below its previous high. A 5% or even 10% correction isn't necessarily something unusual or a sign that the trend is broken. It's simply part of how markets normally behave.

What is actually rare are very deep drawdowns, like 30% or 40%. So the goal shouldn't be to avoid every correction. If you try to avoid every drawdown, you'll probably miss a large part of the market's upside as well.

The more important question is: Is this just a normal correction, or has the market entered a meaningful change in trend?

The problem is that we usually can't answer that with certainty in real time. When the market is down just 5% or 10%, it could still be a normal correction—or the beginning of a much larger decline.

So rather than looking for a point where we can be 100% certain about what's happening, we should think in terms of probabilities.

We can size our positions so we can tolerate normal corrections, keep enough liquidity and a plan for worse scenarios, and instead of reacting to every decline, look at earnings growth, valuation, and macroeconomic conditions alongside the chart.

The goal isn't to predict every correction. It's to build a portfolio that can survive the uncertainty.

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@RezaMacroEdge

What the US Commercial Property Price Index is really telling us

Check out this chart… real (CPI-adjusted) commercial property prices in the US from 1985 to now.

Clear cycles jump out:

Late 80s to mid-90s → -35% over 9 years

Then a strong run → +107% over 11 years peaking around 2007-08

Global Financial Crisis → -41% in just 2.3 years

Long recovery → +79% over 12 years until ~2022

And now in correction mode → -30% over the past 4.5 years

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@RezaMacroEdge

What’s the takeaway?

Commercial real estate is a classic cyclical asset. Easy money and abundant credit push prices higher for years. Higher rates or economic shocks trigger sharp corrections.

Key point: these are real prices (inflation-adjusted). Even after stripping out CPI, we still see swings of 30–40%+. That matters a lot for long-term investors, REITs, and banks — it directly hits collateral values and real returns.

The current correction looks pretty consistent with past patterns… just mixed with higher-for-longer rates and post-COVID shifts (remote work pressure on offices, etc.).

Bottom line: US commercial property has a habit of correcting meaningfully after long easy-money periods. Short-term horizon? Stay cautious. Long-term? These swings are part of the game.

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@RezaMacroEdge

#Bitcoin

My previous Bitcoin analysis was that after rallying toward $72K, BTC would enter a deeper correction. The market took a different path and pushed up to $82K — and we have to update our view as the market evolves.

My current scenario is that Bitcoin could make another move toward $85K before entering a correction toward the $65K area.

I’m still following the same plan. I started scaling into BTC from the $85K level I mentioned earlier, and now I’m looking for the fourth and fifth entries.

At the end of the day, the market decides which scenario was right — not the analyst.

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@RezaMacroEdge

Bitcoin Whales Are Buying Again — Is a Bottom Forming?

Something interesting is happening beneath the surface of Bitcoin. According to CryptoQuant data cited by Bloomberg, large holders have accumulated around 43,000 BTC over the past 60 days, worth roughly $2.75 billion. This comes after months of distribution and selling pressure.

The important part isn't just the amount accumulated — it's the change in behavior. At the same time, Glassnode data shows signs of improving demand, while recent Bitcoin ETF inflows have also strengthened.

That combination is worth watching:

Whales accumulating
ETF inflows returning
lower selling pressure

Could this be the beginning of a bottom?
Possibly — but it's too early to call it confirmed.

On-chain accumulation is a probability signal, not a timing signal. Large holders can start buying well before a correction is actually over, and wallet movements don't always represent fresh market purchases.

What matters now is whether this accumulation persists and whether broader demand continues to return. If it does, the current weakness could be transitioning from a simple correction into a bottoming process.

For now, I would call it an early bullish signal — not confirmation of a bottom.

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@RezaMacroEdge

Inflation: The Silent Theft of Your Purchasing Power

Your $100 is still $100. But here’s the real question: How much can that $100 actually buy today?

Inflation doesn’t need to take money out of your bank account. It only needs to erode its purchasing power year after year.

Since 2019, cumulative inflation has significantly reduced the real value of cash across many economies.

The lesson for investors
A stable nominal balance does not mean your wealth has been preserved.

If your portfolio gains 10% while inflation runs at 15%, you made money on paper—but lost purchasing power in real terms.

That’s why investors should care about real returns, not just nominal returns.

Cash provides liquidity and optionality. But holding all your wealth in cash for years can mean watching your purchasing power quietly disappear.

This is why long-term portfolios often allocate part of their capital to productive or scarce assets such as:

• Equities
• Real estate
• Infrastructure
• Commodities
• Precious metals
• Private markets
• Inflation-protected bonds

Ultimately, the question isn’t simply:

“How much money do I have?” The better question is: “How much purchasing power will my wealth have in 5, 10, or 20 years?”

Because inflation rarely takes your money by force. It simply makes your money worth a little less every year.

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@RezaMacroEdge

🟨 Gold’s Fundamental Valuation

One interesting way to estimate the fundamental value of gold is to compare its price with M2, or global money supply, measured in U.S. dollars. In this framework, gold is not valued purely based on physical supply and demand. Instead, its price is compared with the amount of money circulating in the global economy. The M2-to-gold ratio is one way to examine this relationship. (In Gold We Trust)

The important point is that the relationship between M2 and gold is not linear in the short term. Real interest rates, the dollar, systemic risk, and capital flows can all distort this relationship for extended periods. But over the long term, monetary expansion is one of the key drivers of gold’s nominal price. And global liquidity remains at historically elevated levels. (StreetStats)

But I think the bigger story lies elsewhere. The world is facing a major debt problem. If this debt crisis eventually leads to aggressive monetary intervention, lower real rates, government bond purchases, and more liquidity creation, what is a risk for gold today could become one of its strongest drivers of growth in the medium term.
Put simply: A debt crisis can push gold lower in the short term. But if policymakers respond by creating more liquidity, that same crisis could become the fuel for gold’s next major rally. And perhaps that is why valuing gold simply by looking at today’s price doesn’t tell us the whole story.

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@RezaMacroEdge