Offshore
Video
memenodes
Who got you into crypto?
Thanks to them you’re going to die 10 years younger from stress and bad habits https://t.co/jkBnOI0EP1
tweet
Who got you into crypto?
Thanks to them you’re going to die 10 years younger from stress and bad habits https://t.co/jkBnOI0EP1
tweet
Offshore
Photo
EndGame Macro
When the Cash Machines Switch Places
What these two charts really show is a slow, almost unnoticed flip in who’s doing the heavy spending. Big Oil used to pour every spare dollar back into the ground. In the 2000s, capex went wild, the net line sank deep into the negative, and shareholder returns were an afterthought. Investors loved the story right up until it broke with oversupply, shale flooding the market, China cooling, and a brutal reset in 2014. Only after years of pain did oil companies get disciplined and start behaving like cash flow machines.
Now look at Big Tech. For most of its rise, tech was the opposite…asset light, high margin, and endlessly generous with buybacks. That combination is exactly why the sector compounded so well. But lately, the script is changing. The capex ramp tied to AI and data centers is enormous. The green line rolling negative tells you these companies are becoming capital hungry and not the frictionless cash engines they used to be.
We’ve Seen This Story Before
If you study old market cycles with railroads, utilities, telecom, oil the pattern is familiar. A new essential infrastructure emerges, promises huge growth, and attracts massive investment. For a while, returns stay strong. Then capacity catches up with the dream, and the sector that once felt unstoppable starts trading like an ordinary business again.
That’s the lesson baked into these charts. It’s not anti tech or pro oil; it’s just how capital cycles work.
What This Implies Going Forward
To me, there are a few clear signals…
Tech is shifting from lightweight compounder to something closer to a utility of compute. That doesn’t mean the end of the story, but it does mean the valuation framework will have to evolve. When a sector goes from minting cash to absorbing cash, markets eventually notice.
And ironically, energy, the sector everyone seems tired of now looks more like tech did a decade ago with disciplined spending, steady buybacks, real cash flow, and very little love from investors.
It’s not about calling a top or predicting a crash. It’s about recognizing that capital always rotates. The heroes of one cycle tend to fund the opportunities of the next. And these charts are the early footprints of that shift.
tweet
When the Cash Machines Switch Places
What these two charts really show is a slow, almost unnoticed flip in who’s doing the heavy spending. Big Oil used to pour every spare dollar back into the ground. In the 2000s, capex went wild, the net line sank deep into the negative, and shareholder returns were an afterthought. Investors loved the story right up until it broke with oversupply, shale flooding the market, China cooling, and a brutal reset in 2014. Only after years of pain did oil companies get disciplined and start behaving like cash flow machines.
Now look at Big Tech. For most of its rise, tech was the opposite…asset light, high margin, and endlessly generous with buybacks. That combination is exactly why the sector compounded so well. But lately, the script is changing. The capex ramp tied to AI and data centers is enormous. The green line rolling negative tells you these companies are becoming capital hungry and not the frictionless cash engines they used to be.
We’ve Seen This Story Before
If you study old market cycles with railroads, utilities, telecom, oil the pattern is familiar. A new essential infrastructure emerges, promises huge growth, and attracts massive investment. For a while, returns stay strong. Then capacity catches up with the dream, and the sector that once felt unstoppable starts trading like an ordinary business again.
That’s the lesson baked into these charts. It’s not anti tech or pro oil; it’s just how capital cycles work.
What This Implies Going Forward
To me, there are a few clear signals…
Tech is shifting from lightweight compounder to something closer to a utility of compute. That doesn’t mean the end of the story, but it does mean the valuation framework will have to evolve. When a sector goes from minting cash to absorbing cash, markets eventually notice.
And ironically, energy, the sector everyone seems tired of now looks more like tech did a decade ago with disciplined spending, steady buybacks, real cash flow, and very little love from investors.
It’s not about calling a top or predicting a crash. It’s about recognizing that capital always rotates. The heroes of one cycle tend to fund the opportunities of the next. And these charts are the early footprints of that shift.
Survive long enough (on Wall Street) and you will start to see the same things over and over. https://t.co/XNegUJfVM4 tweet
Offshore
Photo
memenodes
leverage trading is like gambling, it’s awesome https://t.co/2Zja8bFyuf
tweet
leverage trading is like gambling, it’s awesome https://t.co/2Zja8bFyuf
JUST IN: 🇺🇸 President Trump considers eliminating taxes on gambling winnings. https://t.co/hErigtE7wf tweet
The Few Bets That Matter
The market is the combinaison of millions individuals.
If you think you're smarter than this. You're certainly not as smart as you'd expect.
And even if you were to outsmart it. Once or many times. You won't make money until it agrees with you.
That's why patience matters. That's why I don't buy downtrends. That's why I try to leave my ego asides.
Because even being right doesn't matter until proven right.
tweet
The market is the combinaison of millions individuals.
If you think you're smarter than this. You're certainly not as smart as you'd expect.
And even if you were to outsmart it. Once or many times. You won't make money until it agrees with you.
That's why patience matters. That's why I don't buy downtrends. That's why I try to leave my ego asides.
Because even being right doesn't matter until proven right.
tweet
Clark Square Capital
RT @TiehackCapital: Bought some $VRA today during panic selling. Headline loss was mostly a write down of inventory. I think it’s trading at something like a 50% discount to liquidation value. Probably gets acquired after HQ leaseback. Agree w @ClarkSquareCap looks like good r/r from here.
tweet
RT @TiehackCapital: Bought some $VRA today during panic selling. Headline loss was mostly a write down of inventory. I think it’s trading at something like a 50% discount to liquidation value. Probably gets acquired after HQ leaseback. Agree w @ClarkSquareCap looks like good r/r from here.
tweet
Offshore
Photo
EndGame Macro
STATE EMPLOYMENT AND UNEMPLOYMENT…Reading Between the Lines
The national unemployment rate is sitting at 4.4%, barely changed on the month, and 40 states plus D.C. show no significant movement in unemployment. On the surface, nothing is breaking.
But if you stop at the headline, you miss the part of the story that actually matters.
18 states and D.C. have higher unemployment than a year ago and only nine states have seen improvement. Month to month, we also see eight states drifting higher, including New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, New York, and West Virginia. These aren’t small rural pockets. These are meaningful labor markets.
That’s not what strong, broad based expansions look like. That’s what late cycle cooling looks like.
Job Growth Is Still There But It’s Narrow
The payroll side tells the same story from a different angle. Only one state posted a statistically significant job gain in September (Missouri), and one state posted a loss (New York). The other 48 states and D.C. were essentially flat.
Over the full year, the pattern holds where 15 states added jobs in a meaningful way; 35 states and D.C. basically didn’t. That’s an extremely narrow foundation for national growth.
And when you look at the big contributors, it’s the same familiar names…Texas (+168k), Pennsylvania (+99.9k), and North Carolina (+79.7k). A handful of states are doing the heavy lifting while much of the country simply stalls in place.
This is the kind of distribution you usually see when the cycle is tiring not when the economy is finding a second wind.
Where the Slowdown Lives
The map of unemployment shows the geography of strain plainly where higher rates cluster on the West Coast (California, Oregon, Nevada), in D.C., in parts of the Northeast, and in some industrial Midwest pockets like Michigan and Ohio. These are places that benefited most from stimulus, tech, and early cycle demand and now they’re giving some of it back.
Meanwhile, the employment growth map is almost the inverse with the Sunbelt and Mountain West continue to add workers, while swaths of the country sit in the 0.0% to 0.5% zone…effectively no growth at all.
When Good Numbers Don’t Tell the Whole Truth
Even the bright spots need context. A 4.4% unemployment rate looks fine on paper… but that’s 0.3 percentage points higher than a year ago. Historically, once unemployment rises half a point from cycle lows, recessions often follow. We’re not there but we’re walking toward it.
States with extremely low unemployment (South Dakota at 2.0%, Vermont and Hawaii around 2.5%–2.6%) aren’t booming; they’re shrinking. These are places with aging populations and weak labor force growth, not surging demand.
And the fact that payrolls are unchanged in 48 states is a sign of stagnation.
My Read
Here’s the simplest, clearest way to understand this report…
The labor market engine has clearly downshifted. The strength is narrower, the weakness is spreading, and the overall picture is drifting sideways rather than pushing forward.
The Sunbelt and Mountain West are keeping the headline numbers afloat. The coasts and several industrial states are quietly slipping. And if you removed Texas, Pennsylvania, and the Carolinas from the data, the national picture would look meaningfully worse.
The downturn isn’t loud but it’s persistent. And persistent slowdowns are how recessions begin long before they show up in the aggregate.
If this pattern holds for another couple of quarters, we’ll stop debating whether a slowdown is coming and start debating how deep it might get.
tweet
STATE EMPLOYMENT AND UNEMPLOYMENT…Reading Between the Lines
The national unemployment rate is sitting at 4.4%, barely changed on the month, and 40 states plus D.C. show no significant movement in unemployment. On the surface, nothing is breaking.
But if you stop at the headline, you miss the part of the story that actually matters.
18 states and D.C. have higher unemployment than a year ago and only nine states have seen improvement. Month to month, we also see eight states drifting higher, including New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, New York, and West Virginia. These aren’t small rural pockets. These are meaningful labor markets.
That’s not what strong, broad based expansions look like. That’s what late cycle cooling looks like.
Job Growth Is Still There But It’s Narrow
The payroll side tells the same story from a different angle. Only one state posted a statistically significant job gain in September (Missouri), and one state posted a loss (New York). The other 48 states and D.C. were essentially flat.
Over the full year, the pattern holds where 15 states added jobs in a meaningful way; 35 states and D.C. basically didn’t. That’s an extremely narrow foundation for national growth.
And when you look at the big contributors, it’s the same familiar names…Texas (+168k), Pennsylvania (+99.9k), and North Carolina (+79.7k). A handful of states are doing the heavy lifting while much of the country simply stalls in place.
This is the kind of distribution you usually see when the cycle is tiring not when the economy is finding a second wind.
Where the Slowdown Lives
The map of unemployment shows the geography of strain plainly where higher rates cluster on the West Coast (California, Oregon, Nevada), in D.C., in parts of the Northeast, and in some industrial Midwest pockets like Michigan and Ohio. These are places that benefited most from stimulus, tech, and early cycle demand and now they’re giving some of it back.
Meanwhile, the employment growth map is almost the inverse with the Sunbelt and Mountain West continue to add workers, while swaths of the country sit in the 0.0% to 0.5% zone…effectively no growth at all.
When Good Numbers Don’t Tell the Whole Truth
Even the bright spots need context. A 4.4% unemployment rate looks fine on paper… but that’s 0.3 percentage points higher than a year ago. Historically, once unemployment rises half a point from cycle lows, recessions often follow. We’re not there but we’re walking toward it.
States with extremely low unemployment (South Dakota at 2.0%, Vermont and Hawaii around 2.5%–2.6%) aren’t booming; they’re shrinking. These are places with aging populations and weak labor force growth, not surging demand.
And the fact that payrolls are unchanged in 48 states is a sign of stagnation.
My Read
Here’s the simplest, clearest way to understand this report…
The labor market engine has clearly downshifted. The strength is narrower, the weakness is spreading, and the overall picture is drifting sideways rather than pushing forward.
The Sunbelt and Mountain West are keeping the headline numbers afloat. The coasts and several industrial states are quietly slipping. And if you removed Texas, Pennsylvania, and the Carolinas from the data, the national picture would look meaningfully worse.
The downturn isn’t loud but it’s persistent. And persistent slowdowns are how recessions begin long before they show up in the aggregate.
If this pattern holds for another couple of quarters, we’ll stop debating whether a slowdown is coming and start debating how deep it might get.
tweet
Offshore
Video
memenodes
“The road to financial freedom starts with investing”
The road: https://t.co/79YhrUI2l6
tweet
“The road to financial freedom starts with investing”
The road: https://t.co/79YhrUI2l6
tweet