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EndGame Macro
🇯🇵 Japan’s Quiet Move With Loud Global Consequences
Japan raising rates is a global funding headline. For years, the yen has been the cheapest place on earth to borrow. That’s how a huge amount of global risk taking was financed…borrow yen, buy higher yielding assets elsewhere. As long as markets were calm and yield gaps stayed wide, being short yen paid well and felt safe.
That’s why the yen kept weakening. Not because Japan was collapsing, but because the world was rewarding leverage.
When Japan nudges rates higher and hints it may stop protecting its bond market as aggressively, that cheap funding starts to disappear enough to change behavior.
And the timing couldn’t be worse. If the global economy is already slowing…Japan, the U.S., the U.K., all at once then investors aren’t looking to add risk. They’re looking for exits at the same time.
The yen is the transmission channel
The real danger is what happens if the yen stops falling and starts rising in a global downturn.
Carry trades don’t unwind politely. They unwind when FX moves against them. Once the yen strengthens, funding costs jump, losses pile up, and positions get cut. That selling pushes the yen higher, forcing more selling. It’s a feedback loop.
Up to now, the lack of sustained stress let this trade persist. In a synchronized recession, volatility rises everywhere at once. That’s when the yen flips from funding currency to pressure valve.
Japan is also one of the world’s largest exporters of capital. If domestic yields become more attractive and FX risk feels less one sided, Japanese institutions don’t need to reach as far abroad, exactly when everyone else is trying to derisk too.
What this does to U.S. and U.K. bonds
People assume recession means yields fall. Often true…until the plumbing gets stressed.
If Japan normalizes while the U.S. and U.K. slide into recession, you can get weaker growth expectations but less reliable foreign buying of long dated bonds. That’s how term premium creeps back in even as growth fades.
In a more disorderly scenario, it’s worse. When leverage comes off quickly across regions, markets sell what’s liquid, not what’s risky. Treasuries and Gilts are liquid and they’re collateral. In a scramble for cash, even safe bonds can sell off temporarily because they’re used to meet margin calls elsewhere.
That’s how you get recession and stubbornly high long end yields for a time.
The trade and tariff backdrop makes this harder
Japan can’t lean on exports the way it used to. Tariffs, weaker global demand, and China’s competitiveness are already pressuring its export model. That pressure helped weaken the yen during the carry phase but it also leaves Japan more exposed if conditions tighten suddenly.
In a global recession, export weakness feeds directly into profits and confidence. A stronger yen in that environment tightens real conditions fast.
That’s why Japan’s policy path is fragile. Hiking supports the currency, but tightens into a synchronized slowdown. That tension is what turns Japan into a transmission hub.
What to watch for and the real breakpoints
This doesn’t break gradually. It breaks when things move too fast.
A sharp yen rally matters more than levels. JGB volatility matters more than yields. FX hedging stress matters more than central bank words. And if U.S. or U.K. bond volatility feeds on itself during recession, policymakers get dragged back in whether they want to or not.
The big risk people are missing
Japan’s hike is about tightening the world’s funding system at the worst possible moment.
The underappreciated risk is a yen led deleveraging wave during a synchronized recession forcing selling of U.S. Treasuries and U.K. Gilts for collateral reasons, pushing yields higher right when recession logic says they should fall.
That’s how market stress comes first and policy response second.
That’s the setup Japan is quietly reintroducing.
“The Bank of Japan is moving[...]
🇯🇵 Japan’s Quiet Move With Loud Global Consequences
Japan raising rates is a global funding headline. For years, the yen has been the cheapest place on earth to borrow. That’s how a huge amount of global risk taking was financed…borrow yen, buy higher yielding assets elsewhere. As long as markets were calm and yield gaps stayed wide, being short yen paid well and felt safe.
That’s why the yen kept weakening. Not because Japan was collapsing, but because the world was rewarding leverage.
When Japan nudges rates higher and hints it may stop protecting its bond market as aggressively, that cheap funding starts to disappear enough to change behavior.
And the timing couldn’t be worse. If the global economy is already slowing…Japan, the U.S., the U.K., all at once then investors aren’t looking to add risk. They’re looking for exits at the same time.
The yen is the transmission channel
The real danger is what happens if the yen stops falling and starts rising in a global downturn.
Carry trades don’t unwind politely. They unwind when FX moves against them. Once the yen strengthens, funding costs jump, losses pile up, and positions get cut. That selling pushes the yen higher, forcing more selling. It’s a feedback loop.
Up to now, the lack of sustained stress let this trade persist. In a synchronized recession, volatility rises everywhere at once. That’s when the yen flips from funding currency to pressure valve.
Japan is also one of the world’s largest exporters of capital. If domestic yields become more attractive and FX risk feels less one sided, Japanese institutions don’t need to reach as far abroad, exactly when everyone else is trying to derisk too.
What this does to U.S. and U.K. bonds
People assume recession means yields fall. Often true…until the plumbing gets stressed.
If Japan normalizes while the U.S. and U.K. slide into recession, you can get weaker growth expectations but less reliable foreign buying of long dated bonds. That’s how term premium creeps back in even as growth fades.
In a more disorderly scenario, it’s worse. When leverage comes off quickly across regions, markets sell what’s liquid, not what’s risky. Treasuries and Gilts are liquid and they’re collateral. In a scramble for cash, even safe bonds can sell off temporarily because they’re used to meet margin calls elsewhere.
That’s how you get recession and stubbornly high long end yields for a time.
The trade and tariff backdrop makes this harder
Japan can’t lean on exports the way it used to. Tariffs, weaker global demand, and China’s competitiveness are already pressuring its export model. That pressure helped weaken the yen during the carry phase but it also leaves Japan more exposed if conditions tighten suddenly.
In a global recession, export weakness feeds directly into profits and confidence. A stronger yen in that environment tightens real conditions fast.
That’s why Japan’s policy path is fragile. Hiking supports the currency, but tightens into a synchronized slowdown. That tension is what turns Japan into a transmission hub.
What to watch for and the real breakpoints
This doesn’t break gradually. It breaks when things move too fast.
A sharp yen rally matters more than levels. JGB volatility matters more than yields. FX hedging stress matters more than central bank words. And if U.S. or U.K. bond volatility feeds on itself during recession, policymakers get dragged back in whether they want to or not.
The big risk people are missing
Japan’s hike is about tightening the world’s funding system at the worst possible moment.
The underappreciated risk is a yen led deleveraging wave during a synchronized recession forcing selling of U.S. Treasuries and U.K. Gilts for collateral reasons, pushing yields higher right when recession logic says they should fall.
That’s how market stress comes first and policy response second.
That’s the setup Japan is quietly reintroducing.
“The Bank of Japan is moving[...]
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EndGame Macro 🇯🇵 Japan’s Quiet Move With Loud Global Consequences Japan raising rates is a global funding headline. For years, the yen has been the cheapest place on earth to borrow. That’s how a huge amount of global risk taking was financed…borrow yen,…
to raise its policy rate at the Dec. 18-19 monetary policy meeting with a 25-basis-point increase from 0.5% to 0.75% emerging as the leading option, Nikkei has learned.” 👇🏼 https://t.co/qWtkjhfk5s - Kalani o Māui tweet
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The Few Bets That Matter
I just published my review of $LULU quarter, a name I flagged as a potential good position a few days ago for subscribers.
There’s a lot of optimism in this report and I broke down exactly what I’m thinking about the stock from here.
Link’s in the bio. https://t.co/SNd5CkgDwl
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I just published my review of $LULU quarter, a name I flagged as a potential good position a few days ago for subscribers.
There’s a lot of optimism in this report and I broke down exactly what I’m thinking about the stock from here.
Link’s in the bio. https://t.co/SNd5CkgDwl
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The Few Bets That Matter
I finally sold out off $PYPL today.
The company has potential but the execution just hasn’t kept up. What was supposed to be a fast-pace rollout turned into a constant “in the next few quarters”.
The new checkout experience was built over a year ago and is rolled out to 20% of clients. No real updates on PayPal World, and management keeps pointing to weak consumers, delays and 2026 as another “investment year.”
There are positives, sure. Branded is growing and Braintree has been purged, the agentic payment service is out and this could drive engagement but those were only secondary bull cases to my opinion.
There are better names with fewer headaches and more upside elsewhere. Cheap is cheap for a reason.
And I'd sign in a heartbeat if my post could sign the bottom, for the sanity of those who still hold and the peace of mind for those who come after.
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I finally sold out off $PYPL today.
The company has potential but the execution just hasn’t kept up. What was supposed to be a fast-pace rollout turned into a constant “in the next few quarters”.
The new checkout experience was built over a year ago and is rolled out to 20% of clients. No real updates on PayPal World, and management keeps pointing to weak consumers, delays and 2026 as another “investment year.”
There are positives, sure. Branded is growing and Braintree has been purged, the agentic payment service is out and this could drive engagement but those were only secondary bull cases to my opinion.
There are better names with fewer headaches and more upside elsewhere. Cheap is cheap for a reason.
And I'd sign in a heartbeat if my post could sign the bottom, for the sanity of those who still hold and the peace of mind for those who come after.
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EndGame Macro
Ripple’s Path From Pushback to Plumbing
A conditional trust bank charter is permission to build, not a free pass to operate. It means Ripple is being judged as infrastructure, not as a speculative crypto company. The focus isn’t deposits or lending; it’s custody, control of reserves, and compliance. Ripple is being allowed to handle sensitive plumbing, but only under tight supervision and with clear guardrails.
That distinction matters. A national trust bank is boring by design. And boring is exactly what institutions want. This is about making RLUSD legible to regulators and usable by banks, not about hype. The conditional part is the system keeping leverage, Ripple still has to prove it can meet operational, risk, and governance standards before anything goes fully live.
From Resistance To Absorption
The bigger arc here is familiar if you’ve watched how the U.S. system deals with disruption. First comes resistance, then containment, then absorption. The SEC lawsuit looked existential at the time, but in hindsight it forced Ripple to clean up its legal edges and commit fully to building inside the system rather than around it. While most of crypto was arguing about price, Ripple was quietly assembling the boring pieces institutions actually need including custody, risk management, prime brokerage, stablecoin infrastructure.
That’s why this moment matters. Ripple isn’t positioning itself as a bank killer. It’s positioning itself as connective tissue and the rails banks can use to move value faster across fiat, stablecoins, and tokenized assets without rewriting the rules every time. XRP sits in the middle as the bridge asset, not the headline. When you zoom out, this doesn’t look like chaos or a sudden win. It looked choreographed with years of friction followed by a controlled entry into the system. That’s how financial plumbing gets built…slowly, quietly, and under supervision.
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Ripple’s Path From Pushback to Plumbing
A conditional trust bank charter is permission to build, not a free pass to operate. It means Ripple is being judged as infrastructure, not as a speculative crypto company. The focus isn’t deposits or lending; it’s custody, control of reserves, and compliance. Ripple is being allowed to handle sensitive plumbing, but only under tight supervision and with clear guardrails.
That distinction matters. A national trust bank is boring by design. And boring is exactly what institutions want. This is about making RLUSD legible to regulators and usable by banks, not about hype. The conditional part is the system keeping leverage, Ripple still has to prove it can meet operational, risk, and governance standards before anything goes fully live.
From Resistance To Absorption
The bigger arc here is familiar if you’ve watched how the U.S. system deals with disruption. First comes resistance, then containment, then absorption. The SEC lawsuit looked existential at the time, but in hindsight it forced Ripple to clean up its legal edges and commit fully to building inside the system rather than around it. While most of crypto was arguing about price, Ripple was quietly assembling the boring pieces institutions actually need including custody, risk management, prime brokerage, stablecoin infrastructure.
That’s why this moment matters. Ripple isn’t positioning itself as a bank killer. It’s positioning itself as connective tissue and the rails banks can use to move value faster across fiat, stablecoins, and tokenized assets without rewriting the rules every time. XRP sits in the middle as the bridge asset, not the headline. When you zoom out, this doesn’t look like chaos or a sudden win. It looked choreographed with years of friction followed by a controlled entry into the system. That’s how financial plumbing gets built…slowly, quietly, and under supervision.
HUGE news! @Ripple just received conditional approval from the @USOCC to charter Ripple National Trust Bank. This is a massive step forward - first for $RLUSD, setting the highest standard for stablecoin compliance with both federal (OCC) & state (NYDFS) oversight.
To the banking lobbyists – your anti-competitive tactics are transparent. You’ve complained that crypto isn’t playing by the same rules, but here’s the crypto industry – directly under the OCC's supervision and standards – prioritizing compliance, trust and innovation to the benefit of consumers. What are you so afraid of? tweet
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Democratizing Access Or Socializing Exit Risk?
If this gets approved, the real risk is that a massive, steady pool of retirement money becomes a new, permanent buyer for assets that usually rely on institutions. 401K flows are predictable and sticky. Once alternatives are allowed in the wrapper, they don’t show up as flashy picks they get folded quietly into target date funds, managed portfolios, and diversification sleeves. That’s how these things always enter the system…calmly, professionally, and with just enough structure to pass oversight.
On its own, that’s not inherently bad. But it matters when this happens. If the economy were accelerating and liquidity were abundant, it would look like natural evolution. Doing it as growth is slowing and credit stress is rising changes the character of the move.
Where the risk really sits
The risk is liquidity and timing. Alternatives don’t reprice smoothly. They look stable until they don’t, because prices are model based and exits are limited. Retirement accounts feel liquid; private assets aren’t. That mismatch only becomes obvious when people want their money at the same time.
Layer on fees, complexity, and discretion, and you get a system where returns can look fine on paper long after the underlying reality has shifted. That’s manageable for pensions and endowments who know what they’re holding. It’s a different story for households who assume their retirement savings behave like public markets.
The uncomfortable incentive question
This wouldn’t be used as some cartoonish dump on retail moment. But incentives matter. When private markets tighten, everyone wants new capital and orderly exits. Opening the 401K channel creates a slow, reliable bid and exactly the kind that helps absorb aging assets, smooth valuations, and extend cycles. That’s not malicious; it’s how capital markets work.
The danger is that households end up funding assets late in the cycle, when returns are harder and risks are more asymmetric. Not because anyone lied, but because distribution widened at the wrong moment.
My View
This is about where risk lands when the cycle turns. Expanding access to alternatives during economic deterioration doesn’t just spread opportunity, it spreads fragility. The biggest threat isn’t the first loss. It’s the plumbing stress that shows up later, when liquidity, pricing, and expectations stop lining up.
tweet
Democratizing Access Or Socializing Exit Risk?
If this gets approved, the real risk is that a massive, steady pool of retirement money becomes a new, permanent buyer for assets that usually rely on institutions. 401K flows are predictable and sticky. Once alternatives are allowed in the wrapper, they don’t show up as flashy picks they get folded quietly into target date funds, managed portfolios, and diversification sleeves. That’s how these things always enter the system…calmly, professionally, and with just enough structure to pass oversight.
On its own, that’s not inherently bad. But it matters when this happens. If the economy were accelerating and liquidity were abundant, it would look like natural evolution. Doing it as growth is slowing and credit stress is rising changes the character of the move.
Where the risk really sits
The risk is liquidity and timing. Alternatives don’t reprice smoothly. They look stable until they don’t, because prices are model based and exits are limited. Retirement accounts feel liquid; private assets aren’t. That mismatch only becomes obvious when people want their money at the same time.
Layer on fees, complexity, and discretion, and you get a system where returns can look fine on paper long after the underlying reality has shifted. That’s manageable for pensions and endowments who know what they’re holding. It’s a different story for households who assume their retirement savings behave like public markets.
The uncomfortable incentive question
This wouldn’t be used as some cartoonish dump on retail moment. But incentives matter. When private markets tighten, everyone wants new capital and orderly exits. Opening the 401K channel creates a slow, reliable bid and exactly the kind that helps absorb aging assets, smooth valuations, and extend cycles. That’s not malicious; it’s how capital markets work.
The danger is that households end up funding assets late in the cycle, when returns are harder and risks are more asymmetric. Not because anyone lied, but because distribution widened at the wrong moment.
My View
This is about where risk lands when the cycle turns. Expanding access to alternatives during economic deterioration doesn’t just spread opportunity, it spreads fragility. The biggest threat isn’t the first loss. It’s the plumbing stress that shows up later, when liquidity, pricing, and expectations stop lining up.
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EndGame Macro
If someone wants to label this a Hassett premium, that’s fine but the point is more basic than that. The long end is charging a toll. It’s charging for deficits and supply, for inflation uncertainty that hasn’t fully cleared, for political and policy noise, and for the fact that the buyer base is more price sensitive than it used to be. That’s what term premium looks like in real life with trust, volatility, and supply, all expressed in basis points.
And that’s the key distinction. This move isn’t about rate expectations doing the heavy lifting. If it were, you’d see the long end following the front end more cleanly. Instead, the message is that the Fed can ease short rates, but long term money still demands compensation. That’s how you end up in the uncomfortable regime where cuts happen, spreads widen, and financial conditions don’t actually loosen where they matter most.
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If someone wants to label this a Hassett premium, that’s fine but the point is more basic than that. The long end is charging a toll. It’s charging for deficits and supply, for inflation uncertainty that hasn’t fully cleared, for political and policy noise, and for the fact that the buyer base is more price sensitive than it used to be. That’s what term premium looks like in real life with trust, volatility, and supply, all expressed in basis points.
And that’s the key distinction. This move isn’t about rate expectations doing the heavy lifting. If it were, you’d see the long end following the front end more cleanly. Instead, the message is that the Fed can ease short rates, but long term money still demands compensation. That’s how you end up in the uncomfortable regime where cuts happen, spreads widen, and financial conditions don’t actually loosen where they matter most.
My colleague, and the world's best bond strategist (in my humble view), Ryan Swift argues that the 10-year is struggling with the "Hassett premium." The bond market may require a sacrifice at the altar of CB independence... even if I think that's kind of unfair to Hassett. https://t.co/2nhbjMHl0N tweet
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https://t.co/XqxVI7NXWN
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https://t.co/XqxVI7NXWN
BREAKING: President Trump says land strikes in Venezuela are "starting." https://t.co/55nXPXavPU tweet
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When Banks Choose Certainty Over Comfort
The discount window is the Fed’s backstop for banks when funding gets awkward. If a bank needs cash and doesn’t like what it’s seeing in private markets, it can borrow directly from the Fed against good collateral. That’s the point…keep a temporary funding issue from turning into forced selling or something worse. It’s not meant to be a go to source of funding, and banks generally avoid it unless they have a reason to value certainty over optics or cost.
What’s different right now
This chart isn’t about a sudden crisis. It’s about a higher baseline of stress. Usage stepping up and staying elevated tells you private funding is less forgiving than it was earlier in the year. When markets are smooth, banks fund each other easily and cheaply. When volatility rises, deposits get more competitive, or counterparties get cautious, banks start preferring guaranteed liquidity even if it’s a little more expensive.
My View
Banks don’t tap the discount window because they’re bullish. They tap it because the system is getting tighter in subtle ways. Rate volatility, unrealized losses, balance sheet constraints, and year end pressures all push behavior in the same direction: don’t sell assets at bad prices, don’t rely on fragile funding, lock in certainty. This isn’t a red alert panic signal, but it is a sign that the plumbing is under more strain than the headlines suggest. Liquidity is still there but it’s becoming more selective, and that’s usually how stress shows up before anyone wants to call it a problem.
tweet
When Banks Choose Certainty Over Comfort
The discount window is the Fed’s backstop for banks when funding gets awkward. If a bank needs cash and doesn’t like what it’s seeing in private markets, it can borrow directly from the Fed against good collateral. That’s the point…keep a temporary funding issue from turning into forced selling or something worse. It’s not meant to be a go to source of funding, and banks generally avoid it unless they have a reason to value certainty over optics or cost.
What’s different right now
This chart isn’t about a sudden crisis. It’s about a higher baseline of stress. Usage stepping up and staying elevated tells you private funding is less forgiving than it was earlier in the year. When markets are smooth, banks fund each other easily and cheaply. When volatility rises, deposits get more competitive, or counterparties get cautious, banks start preferring guaranteed liquidity even if it’s a little more expensive.
My View
Banks don’t tap the discount window because they’re bullish. They tap it because the system is getting tighter in subtle ways. Rate volatility, unrealized losses, balance sheet constraints, and year end pressures all push behavior in the same direction: don’t sell assets at bad prices, don’t rely on fragile funding, lock in certainty. This isn’t a red alert panic signal, but it is a sign that the plumbing is under more strain than the headlines suggest. Liquidity is still there but it’s becoming more selective, and that’s usually how stress shows up before anyone wants to call it a problem.
New high in discount window usage for 2025
Highest since April '24 https://t.co/heOsRavigS tweet
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EndGame Macro
When Credit Spreads Whisper Confidence And Risk Gets Loud
Credit spreads are just the market’s risk surcharge. It’s the extra yield investors demand to lend to companies instead of the government. When spreads are tight, investors feel comfortable, defaults feel far away, and liquidity feels reliable. Nobody thinks they’re being paid much for risk and they’re fine with that.
That’s what makes this moment interesting. Spreads this tight don’t mean risk is gone. They mean people believe it’s contained.
Why this isn’t as comforting as it looks
What you’re really seeing here is money crowding into the safest looking parts of credit. Big investment grade issuers still have a bid because pensions, insurers, ETFs, and foreign buyers want yield without touching obvious trouble. Meanwhile, a lot of the stress is hiding elsewhere like in private credit, commercial real estate, smaller balance sheets, and borrowers that don’t trade every day. Those pressures don’t show up neatly in an IG spread chart.
My Read
Spreads this tight say more about confidence in policy backstops than confidence in the economy. Investors are leaning on the idea that the system stays orderly, that refinancing works, and that policymakers step in if things wobble. That can hold for a while. But when spreads are already compressed, there’s very little upside left and a lot of downside if growth slows more than expected, downgrades pick up, or funding costs stay high because long term rates refuse to fall. This is a warning that the market is pricing a very smooth outcome, and smooth outcomes are fragile by definition.
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When Credit Spreads Whisper Confidence And Risk Gets Loud
Credit spreads are just the market’s risk surcharge. It’s the extra yield investors demand to lend to companies instead of the government. When spreads are tight, investors feel comfortable, defaults feel far away, and liquidity feels reliable. Nobody thinks they’re being paid much for risk and they’re fine with that.
That’s what makes this moment interesting. Spreads this tight don’t mean risk is gone. They mean people believe it’s contained.
Why this isn’t as comforting as it looks
What you’re really seeing here is money crowding into the safest looking parts of credit. Big investment grade issuers still have a bid because pensions, insurers, ETFs, and foreign buyers want yield without touching obvious trouble. Meanwhile, a lot of the stress is hiding elsewhere like in private credit, commercial real estate, smaller balance sheets, and borrowers that don’t trade every day. Those pressures don’t show up neatly in an IG spread chart.
My Read
Spreads this tight say more about confidence in policy backstops than confidence in the economy. Investors are leaning on the idea that the system stays orderly, that refinancing works, and that policymakers step in if things wobble. That can hold for a while. But when spreads are already compressed, there’s very little upside left and a lot of downside if growth slows more than expected, downgrades pick up, or funding costs stay high because long term rates refuse to fall. This is a warning that the market is pricing a very smooth outcome, and smooth outcomes are fragile by definition.
U.S. Credit Spreads fall to lowest level since 1998 🤯👀 https://t.co/rCc8K2FHeY tweet