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The Few Bets That Matter
RT @WealthyReadings: The AI trade isn't over.
$NBIS $ALAB
👇 https://t.co/g2onKBMbzw
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RT @WealthyReadings: The AI trade isn't over.
$NBIS $ALAB
👇 https://t.co/g2onKBMbzw
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The Few Bets That Matter
They said that China was uninvestable at the start of the year and that no stocks were worth buying.
It ended up outperforming the U.S. and many other markets - and it’ll continue doing so.
The best asset remains $BABA, with many other stocks ready to fly through the year while they continue to ignore the country.
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They said that China was uninvestable at the start of the year and that no stocks were worth buying.
It ended up outperforming the U.S. and many other markets - and it’ll continue doing so.
The best asset remains $BABA, with many other stocks ready to fly through the year while they continue to ignore the country.
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EndGame Macro
Touching the Hull And How the U.S. Is Rewriting the Rules of Sanctions Enforcement
This isn’t really about one tanker, or even Venezuela’s oil in isolation. It’s the U.S. turning sanctions from something you litigate into something you physically enforce. Boarding ships, seizing cargo, and openly talking about pursuing additional vessels is a signal that sanctions evasion is no longer a paperwork game. The audience isn’t just Caracas, it’s the entire ecosystem that makes gray market oil move including ship owners, insurers, brokers, banks, port services, and the flags of convenience system that shields them. Once enforcement touches hulls instead of spreadsheets, the risk math changes fast.
Why this goes beyond Venezuela
Venezuela’s barrels alone don’t move global oil prices much. The pressure comes from what enforcement does to the plumbing. Insurance premiums rise, counterparties disappear, financing costs jump, routes get longer, and margins compress. That’s how sanctions actually bite by making the whole shadow supply chain fragile and expensive. Even traders who never touch Venezuelan crude pay attention, because the same tactics apply anywhere sanctions are being skirted.
The China angle and why it’s indirect
Most of these vessels operate under flags like Panama and move as part of a dark fleet. China’s role is as the end buyer of discounted crude, not the operator of the ships themselves. That’s intentional. Washington is squeezing the middle m of logistics, insurance, shipping rather than confronting Beijing directly. It raises friction and cost without forcing an overt diplomatic clash.
Monroe Doctrine 2.0 Angle
The U.S. is reasserting control in the Western Hemisphere, not just diplomatically but physically, to push out rival influence and lock down energy flows close to home. That’s why this feels different from past sanctions cycles. Its enforcement paired with deterrence, a reminder that the U.S. still controls maritime, legal, and financial choke points in its near abroad.
The real risk
The upside, from Washington’s perspective, is restoring credibility. Sanctions only work if people believe enforcement is real. The risk is escalation with Venezuelan naval escorts, tighter standoffs at sea, and precedent setting behavior that other regions may mirror. If this stays contained, the impact shows up as higher friction and volatility, not a supply shock. If it spirals, it stops being a sanctions story and starts looking like a geopolitical one with spillovers into energy markets, insurance, and global risk sentiment.
My View
This is not about oil shortages tomorrow. It’s a calculated move to reprice risk in the shadow energy trade and reassert hemispheric control. The real question is how far the U.S. is willing to go to make sanctions enforcement physical again, and how the rest of the system adapts once it realizes the rules have changed.
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Touching the Hull And How the U.S. Is Rewriting the Rules of Sanctions Enforcement
This isn’t really about one tanker, or even Venezuela’s oil in isolation. It’s the U.S. turning sanctions from something you litigate into something you physically enforce. Boarding ships, seizing cargo, and openly talking about pursuing additional vessels is a signal that sanctions evasion is no longer a paperwork game. The audience isn’t just Caracas, it’s the entire ecosystem that makes gray market oil move including ship owners, insurers, brokers, banks, port services, and the flags of convenience system that shields them. Once enforcement touches hulls instead of spreadsheets, the risk math changes fast.
Why this goes beyond Venezuela
Venezuela’s barrels alone don’t move global oil prices much. The pressure comes from what enforcement does to the plumbing. Insurance premiums rise, counterparties disappear, financing costs jump, routes get longer, and margins compress. That’s how sanctions actually bite by making the whole shadow supply chain fragile and expensive. Even traders who never touch Venezuelan crude pay attention, because the same tactics apply anywhere sanctions are being skirted.
The China angle and why it’s indirect
Most of these vessels operate under flags like Panama and move as part of a dark fleet. China’s role is as the end buyer of discounted crude, not the operator of the ships themselves. That’s intentional. Washington is squeezing the middle m of logistics, insurance, shipping rather than confronting Beijing directly. It raises friction and cost without forcing an overt diplomatic clash.
Monroe Doctrine 2.0 Angle
The U.S. is reasserting control in the Western Hemisphere, not just diplomatically but physically, to push out rival influence and lock down energy flows close to home. That’s why this feels different from past sanctions cycles. Its enforcement paired with deterrence, a reminder that the U.S. still controls maritime, legal, and financial choke points in its near abroad.
The real risk
The upside, from Washington’s perspective, is restoring credibility. Sanctions only work if people believe enforcement is real. The risk is escalation with Venezuelan naval escorts, tighter standoffs at sea, and precedent setting behavior that other regions may mirror. If this stays contained, the impact shows up as higher friction and volatility, not a supply shock. If it spirals, it stops being a sanctions story and starts looking like a geopolitical one with spillovers into energy markets, insurance, and global risk sentiment.
My View
This is not about oil shortages tomorrow. It’s a calculated move to reprice risk in the shadow energy trade and reassert hemispheric control. The real question is how far the U.S. is willing to go to make sanctions enforcement physical again, and how the rest of the system adapts once it realizes the rules have changed.
BREAKING: The US has seized a 3rd oil tanker near Venezuela tweet
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EndGame Macro
A Single Substation Failure And A Citywide Wake Up Call
On Saturday, December 20, a fire at a PG&E substation near 8th and Mission knocked out power to roughly 130,000 customers, about one third of San Francisco. Entire neighborhoods went dark at once including the Richmond, Seacliff, the Presidio, Outer and Inner Sunset, Golden Gate Heights, Forest Knolls and Forest Hill, with knock on effects through Downtown, Union Square, the Financial District, SoMa, and the Mission.
As of today most power had been restored, but 16,000–21,000 residents were still without electricity as crews continued repairs. What this exposed is how fast daily life unravels when power disappears. Transit stalled as Powell Street and Civic Center BART stations closed, Muni lines were disrupted, and traffic lights failed across major corridors. Businesses shut mid weekend, restaurants lost refrigeration, payment systems went offline, and Waymo suspended self driving service after cars stalled at dead intersections. In a dense city, electricity isn’t just lighting; it’s transportation, payments, safety systems, and basic mobility. When a single substation fails, everything downstream feels it within minutes.
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A Single Substation Failure And A Citywide Wake Up Call
On Saturday, December 20, a fire at a PG&E substation near 8th and Mission knocked out power to roughly 130,000 customers, about one third of San Francisco. Entire neighborhoods went dark at once including the Richmond, Seacliff, the Presidio, Outer and Inner Sunset, Golden Gate Heights, Forest Knolls and Forest Hill, with knock on effects through Downtown, Union Square, the Financial District, SoMa, and the Mission.
As of today most power had been restored, but 16,000–21,000 residents were still without electricity as crews continued repairs. What this exposed is how fast daily life unravels when power disappears. Transit stalled as Powell Street and Civic Center BART stations closed, Muni lines were disrupted, and traffic lights failed across major corridors. Businesses shut mid weekend, restaurants lost refrigeration, payment systems went offline, and Waymo suspended self driving service after cars stalled at dead intersections. In a dense city, electricity isn’t just lighting; it’s transportation, payments, safety systems, and basic mobility. When a single substation fails, everything downstream feels it within minutes.
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EndGame Macro
Banks Look Healthy Until You Ask Who They’re Lending To
The December 19 H.8 tells a pretty clean late cycle story. Banks are still expanding, but they’re doing it with less liquidity and more exposure to the parts of the system that matter most when conditions tighten. As of the week ending December 10, total commercial bank assets are about $24.5T, bank credit is $18.9T, and loans and leases sit around $13.3T all higher than mid year. The change is on the cushion side. Cash assets have slid from roughly $3.38T in June to about $2.9–$3.0T now. There is more lending but less cash on hand. That’s not a crisis by itself, but it absolutely changes how stress would spread if something breaks.
Where the Risk Is Quietly Migrating
The composition of that growth matters far more than the headline totals. Loans to non depository financial institutions (NDFIs) have jumped from about $1.57T in May to roughly $1.81T by mid December. These aren’t households or operating businesses they’re funds, mortgage credit intermediaries, private equity vehicles, hedge funds, insurance related entities, securitization vehicles, and other financial middlemen. In calm markets, this credit looks fine. When volatility hits, these are the borrowers that tend to all need liquidity at the same time, which is how funding stress accelerates.
By contrast, traditional C&I lending is basically flat around $2.7T, construction and land development loans have drifted lower to about $455B, and CRE overall is still inching higher near $3.07T. That mix says banks are cautious about new real economy activity, even as exposure to the existing asset stock keeps building.
Why This Lines Up With the Bankruptcy Data
That balance sheet picture matches what we’re seeing in business stress. Through September 2025, there were about 8,937 Chapter 11 filings including Subchapter V, with 767 commercial Chapter 11s and 210 Subchapter V elections in September alone. On the surface, that looks manageable because it’s below crisis era peaks. But in practice, it means a growing share of stress is being worked through smaller, faster restructurings that don’t look dramatic in aggregate data. Distress is rising it’s just being absorbed quietly.
Why This Setup Matters
Two things stand out to me. First, liquidity is being used up. Cash is shrinking while loan growth is running north of 6%, and the allowance for loan and lease losses is still hovering around $203B, basically flat, despite a larger and more complex loan book. Second, risk is drifting downstream away from plain vanilla lending and toward nonbank financial exposures and smaller business restructurings that don’t immediately trip system wide alarms.
My View
Banks are still extending credit, drawing down cash, and increasingly financing the nonbank financial system at the same time that business failures are rising, just not in a way that looks explosive. That works fine when markets are calm. It’s exactly the setup where pressure shows up first when volatility spikes, funding tightens, or confidence slips. The H.8 and the bankruptcy data are quietly telling you where the stress is being parked and where it’s most likely to surface if conditions turn.
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Banks Look Healthy Until You Ask Who They’re Lending To
The December 19 H.8 tells a pretty clean late cycle story. Banks are still expanding, but they’re doing it with less liquidity and more exposure to the parts of the system that matter most when conditions tighten. As of the week ending December 10, total commercial bank assets are about $24.5T, bank credit is $18.9T, and loans and leases sit around $13.3T all higher than mid year. The change is on the cushion side. Cash assets have slid from roughly $3.38T in June to about $2.9–$3.0T now. There is more lending but less cash on hand. That’s not a crisis by itself, but it absolutely changes how stress would spread if something breaks.
Where the Risk Is Quietly Migrating
The composition of that growth matters far more than the headline totals. Loans to non depository financial institutions (NDFIs) have jumped from about $1.57T in May to roughly $1.81T by mid December. These aren’t households or operating businesses they’re funds, mortgage credit intermediaries, private equity vehicles, hedge funds, insurance related entities, securitization vehicles, and other financial middlemen. In calm markets, this credit looks fine. When volatility hits, these are the borrowers that tend to all need liquidity at the same time, which is how funding stress accelerates.
By contrast, traditional C&I lending is basically flat around $2.7T, construction and land development loans have drifted lower to about $455B, and CRE overall is still inching higher near $3.07T. That mix says banks are cautious about new real economy activity, even as exposure to the existing asset stock keeps building.
Why This Lines Up With the Bankruptcy Data
That balance sheet picture matches what we’re seeing in business stress. Through September 2025, there were about 8,937 Chapter 11 filings including Subchapter V, with 767 commercial Chapter 11s and 210 Subchapter V elections in September alone. On the surface, that looks manageable because it’s below crisis era peaks. But in practice, it means a growing share of stress is being worked through smaller, faster restructurings that don’t look dramatic in aggregate data. Distress is rising it’s just being absorbed quietly.
Why This Setup Matters
Two things stand out to me. First, liquidity is being used up. Cash is shrinking while loan growth is running north of 6%, and the allowance for loan and lease losses is still hovering around $203B, basically flat, despite a larger and more complex loan book. Second, risk is drifting downstream away from plain vanilla lending and toward nonbank financial exposures and smaller business restructurings that don’t immediately trip system wide alarms.
My View
Banks are still extending credit, drawing down cash, and increasingly financing the nonbank financial system at the same time that business failures are rising, just not in a way that looks explosive. That works fine when markets are calm. It’s exactly the setup where pressure shows up first when volatility spikes, funding tightens, or confidence slips. The H.8 and the bankruptcy data are quietly telling you where the stress is being parked and where it’s most likely to surface if conditions turn.
Now available: Weekly data on the H.8 release, Assets and Liabilities of Commercial Banks in the United States (1/2) #FedData https://t.co/WeJhdaARrt tweet
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EndGame Macro
The Media Isn’t Really Talking About This, But Farmers in Europe Are Revolting
What unfolded in Brussels wasn’t random or emotional noise. It was pressure applied at exactly the moment it mattered. Farmers showed up with tractors as EU leaders met to decide the fate of the Mercosur agreement, and only after streets were blocked and police clashed with protesters did the signing get pushed into January. That alone tells you this wasn’t just about procedure. It was about leverage on who has it, and who doesn’t.
Why Farmers See a Pattern, Not a Policy Error
From the farm gate, this deal doesn’t land in isolation. It lands after years of rising costs, tighter environmental rules, higher fuel and fertilizer prices, and thinner margins. Now layer on import quotas for beef, poultry, sugar, ethanol, and rice products where European farmers already operate on razor thin economics. Officials talk about caps and safeguards, but farmers know how markets work where prices move at the margin, and once cheaper supply enters, expectations reset quickly. That’s why the protests felt inevitable. Delay the signing to show you’re listening, add inspections and reciprocity language, then try again once attention fades. Over time, the structure still shifts.
What Brussels Is Optimizing For
Zoom out and the incentives line up. The big winners from Mercosur are Europe’s industrial exporters in autos, machinery, chemicals, pharmaceuticals where tariff savings and market access are meaningful. Agriculture becomes the bargaining chip that makes the rest of the deal work. On a spreadsheet, that trade off looks rational. On a farm, where income depends on prices that can’t absorb another hit, it feels like being volunteered to carry Europe’s geopolitical ambitions.
Why This Feels Like More Than Trade
This is where farmers’ suspicion hardens. They see strict rules at home paired with wider market access abroad, and a system that steadily favors scale, consolidation, and longer supply chains. Over time, smaller and mid sized farms struggle, land changes hands, and food production becomes more centralized, financialized and easier to manage from the center and harder to resist politically. You don’t need secret meetings for that outcome. You just need aligned incentives where retailers want cheaper supply, governments want lower headline food prices, industry wants market access, and farmers are left with assurances instead of pricing power.
My View
Farmers aren’t just fighting beef quotas. They’re pushing back against a direction of travel where food sovereignty erodes piece by piece while decisions that shape rural livelihoods are made far away. The delay into January buys time, not trust. Whether the EU recalibrates in a way that genuinely protects farmers or simply returns with better packaging will decide whether this cools off or becomes a lasting political fracture across Europe’s countryside.
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The Media Isn’t Really Talking About This, But Farmers in Europe Are Revolting
What unfolded in Brussels wasn’t random or emotional noise. It was pressure applied at exactly the moment it mattered. Farmers showed up with tractors as EU leaders met to decide the fate of the Mercosur agreement, and only after streets were blocked and police clashed with protesters did the signing get pushed into January. That alone tells you this wasn’t just about procedure. It was about leverage on who has it, and who doesn’t.
Why Farmers See a Pattern, Not a Policy Error
From the farm gate, this deal doesn’t land in isolation. It lands after years of rising costs, tighter environmental rules, higher fuel and fertilizer prices, and thinner margins. Now layer on import quotas for beef, poultry, sugar, ethanol, and rice products where European farmers already operate on razor thin economics. Officials talk about caps and safeguards, but farmers know how markets work where prices move at the margin, and once cheaper supply enters, expectations reset quickly. That’s why the protests felt inevitable. Delay the signing to show you’re listening, add inspections and reciprocity language, then try again once attention fades. Over time, the structure still shifts.
What Brussels Is Optimizing For
Zoom out and the incentives line up. The big winners from Mercosur are Europe’s industrial exporters in autos, machinery, chemicals, pharmaceuticals where tariff savings and market access are meaningful. Agriculture becomes the bargaining chip that makes the rest of the deal work. On a spreadsheet, that trade off looks rational. On a farm, where income depends on prices that can’t absorb another hit, it feels like being volunteered to carry Europe’s geopolitical ambitions.
Why This Feels Like More Than Trade
This is where farmers’ suspicion hardens. They see strict rules at home paired with wider market access abroad, and a system that steadily favors scale, consolidation, and longer supply chains. Over time, smaller and mid sized farms struggle, land changes hands, and food production becomes more centralized, financialized and easier to manage from the center and harder to resist politically. You don’t need secret meetings for that outcome. You just need aligned incentives where retailers want cheaper supply, governments want lower headline food prices, industry wants market access, and farmers are left with assurances instead of pricing power.
My View
Farmers aren’t just fighting beef quotas. They’re pushing back against a direction of travel where food sovereignty erodes piece by piece while decisions that shape rural livelihoods are made far away. The delay into January buys time, not trust. Whether the EU recalibrates in a way that genuinely protects farmers or simply returns with better packaging will decide whether this cools off or becomes a lasting political fracture across Europe’s countryside.
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EndGame Macro
Survival Economics And How Debt Systems Actually End
This idea is older than modern finance. Once a system piles up so much debt that the interest bill starts shaping politics, policy stops being about discipline and starts being about survival. You don’t get permanently high rates in that world. What you get first is pressure with slowing growth, asset stress, tighter credit. That’s deflationary, but not in the grocery store sense that people usually focus on. It shows up on balance sheets first where assets reprice, leverage stops working, cash flow can’t keep up with claims. When that kind of deflation starts threatening the system itself, policy pivots. Not because beliefs change, but because the math stops working.
Why Deflation Isn’t About Grocery Prices
This is where most people get misled. Deflation isn’t defined by whether eggs or tomatoes get cheaper. Consumer prices are a lagging, noisy signal. The real deflation shows up earlier and more clearly in things like collapsing demand, falling asset values, shrinking margins, layoffs, trade slowing, and defaults creeping higher. CPI can stay sticky or even rise in parts of the basket while the underlying economy is already breaking. Price declines are a consequence of deflation, not its essence and they don’t arrive evenly or all at once.
Why Deflation And A Debt Jubilee Go Together
Deflation comes first. Debt becomes too heavy, demand weakens, and the system starts eating itself. The response to that pressure is what looks like a debt jubilee, just not the biblical kind. Modern systems don’t do clean resets. They stretch them out. Bankruptcies, restructurings, regulatory forbearance, rates held below inflation, losses absorbed by balance sheets that can survive it. It’s debt relief through time rather than ceremony. Prices don’t need to collapse across the board for this to work. What’s being deflated is the real burden of debt, not necessarily the CPI print.
Why History Keeps Repeating Itself
That’s why the historical parallels matter. Every society that let compounding debt run unchecked eventually interfered. Some capped interest. Some banned compounding. Some wiped debts periodically. Modern systems do the same thing with better branding. Bankruptcy law, flexible regulation, central banks tolerating negative real rates, they all serve the same purpose of stopping debt from detonating the system in one violent move. The language has changed. The function hasn’t.
What Negative Rates Are Really Signaling
So when you hear that Switzerland may drift back toward negative rates, that’s not a quirky experiment. It’s a stress signal. It says growth is weak, capital is hiding, and policymakers would rather tax safety than let deflation deepen. Negative rates aren’t the reset itself. They’re a tool to slow the damage, keep refinancing alive, and buy time. They’re the system admitting that letting debt clear naturally would be far more destructive than bending the rules.
The Likely Path From Here
High debt systems don’t choose clean endings. They choose managed ones. That usually means a long stretch where deflationary pressure exists underneath in assets, credit, employment, and margins while policy quietly neutralizes debt through repression with capped yields, periodic restructurings, selective relief, and rules that spread losses over time. It isn’t elegant and it isn’t fair, but it’s politically survivable. And once debt reaches this scale, survivability almost always wins over purity.
tweet
Survival Economics And How Debt Systems Actually End
This idea is older than modern finance. Once a system piles up so much debt that the interest bill starts shaping politics, policy stops being about discipline and starts being about survival. You don’t get permanently high rates in that world. What you get first is pressure with slowing growth, asset stress, tighter credit. That’s deflationary, but not in the grocery store sense that people usually focus on. It shows up on balance sheets first where assets reprice, leverage stops working, cash flow can’t keep up with claims. When that kind of deflation starts threatening the system itself, policy pivots. Not because beliefs change, but because the math stops working.
Why Deflation Isn’t About Grocery Prices
This is where most people get misled. Deflation isn’t defined by whether eggs or tomatoes get cheaper. Consumer prices are a lagging, noisy signal. The real deflation shows up earlier and more clearly in things like collapsing demand, falling asset values, shrinking margins, layoffs, trade slowing, and defaults creeping higher. CPI can stay sticky or even rise in parts of the basket while the underlying economy is already breaking. Price declines are a consequence of deflation, not its essence and they don’t arrive evenly or all at once.
Why Deflation And A Debt Jubilee Go Together
Deflation comes first. Debt becomes too heavy, demand weakens, and the system starts eating itself. The response to that pressure is what looks like a debt jubilee, just not the biblical kind. Modern systems don’t do clean resets. They stretch them out. Bankruptcies, restructurings, regulatory forbearance, rates held below inflation, losses absorbed by balance sheets that can survive it. It’s debt relief through time rather than ceremony. Prices don’t need to collapse across the board for this to work. What’s being deflated is the real burden of debt, not necessarily the CPI print.
Why History Keeps Repeating Itself
That’s why the historical parallels matter. Every society that let compounding debt run unchecked eventually interfered. Some capped interest. Some banned compounding. Some wiped debts periodically. Modern systems do the same thing with better branding. Bankruptcy law, flexible regulation, central banks tolerating negative real rates, they all serve the same purpose of stopping debt from detonating the system in one violent move. The language has changed. The function hasn’t.
What Negative Rates Are Really Signaling
So when you hear that Switzerland may drift back toward negative rates, that’s not a quirky experiment. It’s a stress signal. It says growth is weak, capital is hiding, and policymakers would rather tax safety than let deflation deepen. Negative rates aren’t the reset itself. They’re a tool to slow the damage, keep refinancing alive, and buy time. They’re the system admitting that letting debt clear naturally would be far more destructive than bending the rules.
The Likely Path From Here
High debt systems don’t choose clean endings. They choose managed ones. That usually means a long stretch where deflationary pressure exists underneath in assets, credit, employment, and margins while policy quietly neutralizes debt through repression with capped yields, periodic restructurings, selective relief, and rules that spread losses over time. It isn’t elegant and it isn’t fair, but it’s politically survivable. And once debt reaches this scale, survivability almost always wins over purity.
@jam_croissant @gecornelius @TopTradersLive Late stage debt system is not characterized by increasing rates in the face of exponentially-increasing debt, but transition to debt jubilee.
Swiss are about to NIRP again. https://t.co/HSxqdSJRV5 tweet
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Dimitry Nakhla | Babylon Capital®
$NVDA trades at a fairly attractive PEG
NTM P/E ~26x
2026 EPS➡️ $4.69 (+56%)
2027 EPS ➡️ $7.52 (+60%)
2028 EPS ➡️ $9.68 (+28%)
CAGR at various multiples assuming 2028 EPS of $9.68:
28x | 21%
27x | 19%
26x | 17%
25x | 15%
24x | 13%
23x | 10%
22x | 8% https://t.co/epaTYgcq8w
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$NVDA trades at a fairly attractive PEG
NTM P/E ~26x
2026 EPS➡️ $4.69 (+56%)
2027 EPS ➡️ $7.52 (+60%)
2028 EPS ➡️ $9.68 (+28%)
CAGR at various multiples assuming 2028 EPS of $9.68:
28x | 21%
27x | 19%
26x | 17%
25x | 15%
24x | 13%
23x | 10%
22x | 8% https://t.co/epaTYgcq8w
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