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EndGame Macro
RT @onechancefreedm: (1/2) Empire’s Workshop, Crude Interventions, and the New Struggle for Venezuela: U.S., China, Russia, and the Fight to Lock Down the Hemisphere
Greg Grandin’s Empire’s Workshop argued that Latin America was the testing ground where Washington refined the tools of modern empire with sanctions, covert wars, regime destabilization, and the ability to fold raw power into the language of democracy. Garry Leech’s Crude Interventions showed how U.S. foreign policy cannot be separated from oil, with military campaigns and financial pressure used to guarantee access to hydrocarbons and maintain the global dollar order. When read together, these books describe with eerie precision the storm now unfolding around Venezuela.
The U.S. is not treating Venezuela as a peripheral crisis but as a hinge point for the Western Hemisphere. Washington knows that in a Fourth Turning moment, when institutional and monetary systems globally are under stress, it cannot afford to let rivals exploit instability in its own backyard. This is why the narrative of a drug war has given way to a broader strategic frame: cartels as shadow sovereigns, controlling not only narcotics but also ports, trucking fleets, pipelines, minerals, and even migration flows. By designating them as terrorist entities, sanctioning their banks, and targeting their logistics networks, the U.S. is asserting that migration, minerals, and energy corridors fall under national security, not law enforcement.
Here Grandin’s thesis is alive: Latin America once again becomes the workshop where imperial methods are refined. But Leech’s oil centric warning is also central: this is not ultimately about law enforcement, it is about restructuring energy and financial flows to ensure they remain under U.S. command. Guyana’s new oil reserves, Venezuelan offshore rigs, and cartel linked extortion of refineries are treated as strategic arteries of the global economy. Washington’s military patrols in the Caribbean, sanctions on narco linked banks, and crackdowns on illicit shipping are less about Maduro than about guaranteeing that adversaries cannot disrupt or capture these arteries.
China and Russia complicate this picture. Beijing has become Venezuela’s primary creditor and economic lifeline, providing billions in loans, supplying oil and goods to circumvent U.S. sanctions, and securing new deals to develop oil fields that could generate over $1 billion in investment by 2026. Beyond Venezuela, China is now the leading trading partner for much of South America, backing infrastructure projects from Brazilian ports to Chilean energy grids. Its strategy is patient, embedding influence through debt, trade, and long term supply chains.
Russia, by contrast, plays a narrower but sharper role. Its influence rests on military and security cooperation. In 2025, Moscow and Caracas signed a new strategic partnership, followed by the opening of a Kalashnikov ammunition factory in Venezuela. Russia also positions itself as lender of last resort, offering oil swaps and financial lifelines despite sanctions. On the information front, it aligns with Maduro’s worldview, using state media to amplify narratives of resistance against U.S. imperialism. Its objective is less about economic penetration than about ensuring the U.S. faces constant friction in its own hemisphere. Continued on page 2…..
tweet
RT @onechancefreedm: (1/2) Empire’s Workshop, Crude Interventions, and the New Struggle for Venezuela: U.S., China, Russia, and the Fight to Lock Down the Hemisphere
Greg Grandin’s Empire’s Workshop argued that Latin America was the testing ground where Washington refined the tools of modern empire with sanctions, covert wars, regime destabilization, and the ability to fold raw power into the language of democracy. Garry Leech’s Crude Interventions showed how U.S. foreign policy cannot be separated from oil, with military campaigns and financial pressure used to guarantee access to hydrocarbons and maintain the global dollar order. When read together, these books describe with eerie precision the storm now unfolding around Venezuela.
The U.S. is not treating Venezuela as a peripheral crisis but as a hinge point for the Western Hemisphere. Washington knows that in a Fourth Turning moment, when institutional and monetary systems globally are under stress, it cannot afford to let rivals exploit instability in its own backyard. This is why the narrative of a drug war has given way to a broader strategic frame: cartels as shadow sovereigns, controlling not only narcotics but also ports, trucking fleets, pipelines, minerals, and even migration flows. By designating them as terrorist entities, sanctioning their banks, and targeting their logistics networks, the U.S. is asserting that migration, minerals, and energy corridors fall under national security, not law enforcement.
Here Grandin’s thesis is alive: Latin America once again becomes the workshop where imperial methods are refined. But Leech’s oil centric warning is also central: this is not ultimately about law enforcement, it is about restructuring energy and financial flows to ensure they remain under U.S. command. Guyana’s new oil reserves, Venezuelan offshore rigs, and cartel linked extortion of refineries are treated as strategic arteries of the global economy. Washington’s military patrols in the Caribbean, sanctions on narco linked banks, and crackdowns on illicit shipping are less about Maduro than about guaranteeing that adversaries cannot disrupt or capture these arteries.
China and Russia complicate this picture. Beijing has become Venezuela’s primary creditor and economic lifeline, providing billions in loans, supplying oil and goods to circumvent U.S. sanctions, and securing new deals to develop oil fields that could generate over $1 billion in investment by 2026. Beyond Venezuela, China is now the leading trading partner for much of South America, backing infrastructure projects from Brazilian ports to Chilean energy grids. Its strategy is patient, embedding influence through debt, trade, and long term supply chains.
Russia, by contrast, plays a narrower but sharper role. Its influence rests on military and security cooperation. In 2025, Moscow and Caracas signed a new strategic partnership, followed by the opening of a Kalashnikov ammunition factory in Venezuela. Russia also positions itself as lender of last resort, offering oil swaps and financial lifelines despite sanctions. On the information front, it aligns with Maduro’s worldview, using state media to amplify narratives of resistance against U.S. imperialism. Its objective is less about economic penetration than about ensuring the U.S. faces constant friction in its own hemisphere. Continued on page 2…..
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EndGame Macro
RT @onechancefreedm: Venezuela, Cartels, and the Real Targets of U.S. Power
The real pressure campaign isn’t aimed squarely at Maduro. It’s aimed at the cartels because they, not the formal government, hold decisive influence over Venezuela’s leverage and Mexico’s stability. These groups function as shadow sovereigns that manage ports, regulate migration routes, tax trade, and control resources. In Venezuela, the Cartel de los Soles and Tren de Aragua oversee black market economies that eclipse state oil revenues. In Mexico, the Sinaloa Cartel and its rivals dominate trucking fleets, customs, pipelines, and even agriculture. Their reach extends into the economic core of the hemisphere.
This isn’t simply a drug war. The United States is demanding broader macroeconomic concessions. Migration is the first pressure point. Cartels decide whether caravans move through the Darién Gap and across Mexico’s frontier, either overwhelming or easing pressure on the U.S. border. By designating them as terrorist actors and striking their networks, Washington signals that this leverage must be aligned with American political needs.
Energy is equally critical. Cartel backed militias siphon fuel, extort refineries, and hover near Venezuela’s offshore zones, just as Guyana rises as a major oil producer. U.S. naval deployments are less about Maduro than about securing rigs, safeguarding new supply routes, and denying rivals the chance to disrupt or capture a vital source of future oil.
Minerals deepen the stakes. Cartels are embedded in gold, lithium, and rare earth supply chains essential to the energy transition. By targeting their networks, Washington is forcing these flows into Western industries rather than adversarial channels. The same applies to logistics. Cartel linked firms dominate trucking and shipping across Latin America. Treated as national security actors, they must either integrate into U.S. aligned trade systems or be financially isolated.
The financial layer ties it together. For decades, cartel money coursed through U.S. and global shadow banking. Wachovia admitted to laundering billions. HSBC paid fines for moving narco dollars through correspondent accounts. Those flows blended into offshore dollar markets and were quietly tolerated as liquidity. That era is ending. By sanctioning Mexican banks and invoking new authorities to target Chinese intermediaries, Washington is dismantling the pipelines that once made cartels invisible participants in global finance. This is less about narcotics than about restoring control over the monetary arteries of the hemisphere.
In this light, Maduro looks more like a broker than a sovereign. His survival depends on cutting deals with cartels, and his power is limited by their willingness to concede. Washington knows this, which is why the real campaign of sanctions, patrols, financial strikes is aimed at forcing cartel networks to alter their behavior with regards to managing migration, secure energy corridors, channel minerals westward, and stop using trade to empower rivals.
Whether this ends in regime change is uncertain. It could stabilize Maduro as a weakened figurehead while cartels yield to U.S. terms. Or it could undermine the foundations of his rule and trigger political transition. That ambiguity may be deliberate.
What is clear is that this is not just about narcotics. It is about redefining the cartels role in the hemispheric order, severing their ties to the shadow banking system, and forcing them to deliver macroeconomic concessions that serve U.S. strategic dominance.
tweet
RT @onechancefreedm: Venezuela, Cartels, and the Real Targets of U.S. Power
The real pressure campaign isn’t aimed squarely at Maduro. It’s aimed at the cartels because they, not the formal government, hold decisive influence over Venezuela’s leverage and Mexico’s stability. These groups function as shadow sovereigns that manage ports, regulate migration routes, tax trade, and control resources. In Venezuela, the Cartel de los Soles and Tren de Aragua oversee black market economies that eclipse state oil revenues. In Mexico, the Sinaloa Cartel and its rivals dominate trucking fleets, customs, pipelines, and even agriculture. Their reach extends into the economic core of the hemisphere.
This isn’t simply a drug war. The United States is demanding broader macroeconomic concessions. Migration is the first pressure point. Cartels decide whether caravans move through the Darién Gap and across Mexico’s frontier, either overwhelming or easing pressure on the U.S. border. By designating them as terrorist actors and striking their networks, Washington signals that this leverage must be aligned with American political needs.
Energy is equally critical. Cartel backed militias siphon fuel, extort refineries, and hover near Venezuela’s offshore zones, just as Guyana rises as a major oil producer. U.S. naval deployments are less about Maduro than about securing rigs, safeguarding new supply routes, and denying rivals the chance to disrupt or capture a vital source of future oil.
Minerals deepen the stakes. Cartels are embedded in gold, lithium, and rare earth supply chains essential to the energy transition. By targeting their networks, Washington is forcing these flows into Western industries rather than adversarial channels. The same applies to logistics. Cartel linked firms dominate trucking and shipping across Latin America. Treated as national security actors, they must either integrate into U.S. aligned trade systems or be financially isolated.
The financial layer ties it together. For decades, cartel money coursed through U.S. and global shadow banking. Wachovia admitted to laundering billions. HSBC paid fines for moving narco dollars through correspondent accounts. Those flows blended into offshore dollar markets and were quietly tolerated as liquidity. That era is ending. By sanctioning Mexican banks and invoking new authorities to target Chinese intermediaries, Washington is dismantling the pipelines that once made cartels invisible participants in global finance. This is less about narcotics than about restoring control over the monetary arteries of the hemisphere.
In this light, Maduro looks more like a broker than a sovereign. His survival depends on cutting deals with cartels, and his power is limited by their willingness to concede. Washington knows this, which is why the real campaign of sanctions, patrols, financial strikes is aimed at forcing cartel networks to alter their behavior with regards to managing migration, secure energy corridors, channel minerals westward, and stop using trade to empower rivals.
Whether this ends in regime change is uncertain. It could stabilize Maduro as a weakened figurehead while cartels yield to U.S. terms. Or it could undermine the foundations of his rule and trigger political transition. That ambiguity may be deliberate.
What is clear is that this is not just about narcotics. It is about redefining the cartels role in the hemispheric order, severing their ties to the shadow banking system, and forcing them to deliver macroeconomic concessions that serve U.S. strategic dominance.
You don’t have to support this action or like it, but if you work in markets you should *pay attention* to it.
Economic statecraft joins up with the political and economic variants in a unified Grand Macro Strategy. tweet
AkhenOsiris
Nadella got a sneak peek of Gemini 3 and he musta been hella impressed 😂
"Of course, the real test of this era won’t be when another tech company breaks a valuation record. It will be when the overall economy and society themselves reach new heights."
I’ve been thinking a lot about what the net benefit of the AI platform wave is. The real question is how to empower every company out there to get more out of this platform shift and build their own AI native capabilities and enterprise value (vs inadvertently just transfer their unique value to the tech sector!!).
Bill famously said a platform is when the economic value of everybody that uses it exceeds the value of the company that creates it. That’s the essence of the positive-sum future.
Even in our somewhat zero-sum mindset industry, we can create partnerships that create value for all parties involved. Our partnership with OpenAI is a great example. Our investment helped them scale; their research accelerated our own innovation. That’s what healthy platforms and partners do—they catalyze and compound progress.
There’s no better proof than what we announced just this week. The world’s first AI superfactory was co-designed with OpenAI and informed by three generations of AI supercomputers we built for frontier model training and inference. It was also a result of working closely with Nvidia and getting better at the full stack optimization from model architecture to micro-architecture of the chip and everything between three companies!
We also did the work to bring AMD into the fleet doing inference of GPT models, which enabled them to get up to speed on their own software stack for AI.
And now all this infrastructure will scale to support every startup to enterprise doing their own training to inference.
You can see the same dynamic in coding. Thanks to AI, the category itself has expanded and may ultimately become one of the largest software categories. I don’t ever recall any analyst ever asking me about how much revenue Visual Studio makes! But now everyone is excited about AI coding tools. This is another aspect of positive sum, when the category itself is redefined and the pie becomes 10x what it was! With GitHub Copilot we compete for our share and with GitHub and Agent HQ we also provide a platform for others.
Of course, the real test of this era won’t be when another tech company breaks a valuation record. It will be when the overall economy and society themselves reach new heights.
When a pharma company uses AI in silico to bring a new therapy to market in one year instead of twelve. When a manufacturer uses AI to redesign a supply chain overnight. When a teacher personalizes lessons for every student. When a farmer predicts and prevents crop failure. That’s when we’ll know the system is working.
Let us move beyond zero-sum thinking and the winner-take-all hype and focus instead on building broad capabilities that harness the power of this technology to achieve local success in each firm, which then leads to broad economic growth and societal benefits. And every firm needs to make sure they have control of their own destiny and sovereignty vs just a press release with a Tech/AI company or worse leak all their value through what may seem like a partnership, except it's extractive in terms of value exchange in the long run.
We know that the Internet wave had tremendous positive sum impact in the world, and yet we also had some sectors that got hollowed out like local media. This time around we have the opportunity to ensure broad diffusion of this tech with choice and control that is distributed to ensure positive sum outcomes across the board.
At the end of the day, this new technological wave gives us the opportunity to dream bigger and set higher ambitions for what we can collectively achieve. Each of us will need to play our part! - Satya Nadella tweet
Nadella got a sneak peek of Gemini 3 and he musta been hella impressed 😂
"Of course, the real test of this era won’t be when another tech company breaks a valuation record. It will be when the overall economy and society themselves reach new heights."
I’ve been thinking a lot about what the net benefit of the AI platform wave is. The real question is how to empower every company out there to get more out of this platform shift and build their own AI native capabilities and enterprise value (vs inadvertently just transfer their unique value to the tech sector!!).
Bill famously said a platform is when the economic value of everybody that uses it exceeds the value of the company that creates it. That’s the essence of the positive-sum future.
Even in our somewhat zero-sum mindset industry, we can create partnerships that create value for all parties involved. Our partnership with OpenAI is a great example. Our investment helped them scale; their research accelerated our own innovation. That’s what healthy platforms and partners do—they catalyze and compound progress.
There’s no better proof than what we announced just this week. The world’s first AI superfactory was co-designed with OpenAI and informed by three generations of AI supercomputers we built for frontier model training and inference. It was also a result of working closely with Nvidia and getting better at the full stack optimization from model architecture to micro-architecture of the chip and everything between three companies!
We also did the work to bring AMD into the fleet doing inference of GPT models, which enabled them to get up to speed on their own software stack for AI.
And now all this infrastructure will scale to support every startup to enterprise doing their own training to inference.
You can see the same dynamic in coding. Thanks to AI, the category itself has expanded and may ultimately become one of the largest software categories. I don’t ever recall any analyst ever asking me about how much revenue Visual Studio makes! But now everyone is excited about AI coding tools. This is another aspect of positive sum, when the category itself is redefined and the pie becomes 10x what it was! With GitHub Copilot we compete for our share and with GitHub and Agent HQ we also provide a platform for others.
Of course, the real test of this era won’t be when another tech company breaks a valuation record. It will be when the overall economy and society themselves reach new heights.
When a pharma company uses AI in silico to bring a new therapy to market in one year instead of twelve. When a manufacturer uses AI to redesign a supply chain overnight. When a teacher personalizes lessons for every student. When a farmer predicts and prevents crop failure. That’s when we’ll know the system is working.
Let us move beyond zero-sum thinking and the winner-take-all hype and focus instead on building broad capabilities that harness the power of this technology to achieve local success in each firm, which then leads to broad economic growth and societal benefits. And every firm needs to make sure they have control of their own destiny and sovereignty vs just a press release with a Tech/AI company or worse leak all their value through what may seem like a partnership, except it's extractive in terms of value exchange in the long run.
We know that the Internet wave had tremendous positive sum impact in the world, and yet we also had some sectors that got hollowed out like local media. This time around we have the opportunity to ensure broad diffusion of this tech with choice and control that is distributed to ensure positive sum outcomes across the board.
At the end of the day, this new technological wave gives us the opportunity to dream bigger and set higher ambitions for what we can collectively achieve. Each of us will need to play our part! - Satya Nadella tweet
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Dimitry Nakhla | Babylon Capital®
RT @arpangup: When Shohei Ohtani was a high school freshman, he created a detailed "dream sheet" with one central goal: to be the #1 draft pick for 8 NPB (Nippon Professional Baseball) teams.
It was a 64-cell roadmap based on a framework called the Harada Method.
Here's exactly what Shohei did 👇
1. First, some history.... The Harada Method was created by Takashi Harada, a Japanese junior high track coach. He took a team ranked last out of 380 schools and, using his system, turned them into the #1 team in the region within 3 years. They held that top spot for the next 6 years.
2. You start by placing your main goal in the center of an 8x8 grid. For Ohtani, this was "be the #1 draft pick."
3. Next, you identify 8 critical supporting pillars needed to achieve that goal. These surround the main goal.
Ohtani's 8 pillars were:
• Body
• Control
• Sharpness
• Speed
• Pitch Variance
• Personality
• Karma/Luck
• Mental Toughness
4. You then break down each of those 8 pillars into 8 smaller, actionable tasks or daily routines.
This fills out the entire 64-cell grid, turning a massive dream into a concrete, daily action plan.
To improve his karma, he listed tangible actions like:
• Showing Respect to Umpires
• Picking up trash
• Being positive
• Being someone people want to support
5. The method goes far deeper than just technical skills. It forces you to analyze your weaknesses and build confidence. It also has a highlight on service to others, emphasizing that humility and contributing to your community are essential for personal success.
6. The key to the system is daily execution and accountability. Once the 64-cell chart is complete, you turn the tasks and habits into a daily diary and a "Routine Check Sheet." It’s designed to transform abstract intentions into a measurable, daily practice.
tweet
RT @arpangup: When Shohei Ohtani was a high school freshman, he created a detailed "dream sheet" with one central goal: to be the #1 draft pick for 8 NPB (Nippon Professional Baseball) teams.
It was a 64-cell roadmap based on a framework called the Harada Method.
Here's exactly what Shohei did 👇
1. First, some history.... The Harada Method was created by Takashi Harada, a Japanese junior high track coach. He took a team ranked last out of 380 schools and, using his system, turned them into the #1 team in the region within 3 years. They held that top spot for the next 6 years.
2. You start by placing your main goal in the center of an 8x8 grid. For Ohtani, this was "be the #1 draft pick."
3. Next, you identify 8 critical supporting pillars needed to achieve that goal. These surround the main goal.
Ohtani's 8 pillars were:
• Body
• Control
• Sharpness
• Speed
• Pitch Variance
• Personality
• Karma/Luck
• Mental Toughness
4. You then break down each of those 8 pillars into 8 smaller, actionable tasks or daily routines.
This fills out the entire 64-cell grid, turning a massive dream into a concrete, daily action plan.
To improve his karma, he listed tangible actions like:
• Showing Respect to Umpires
• Picking up trash
• Being positive
• Being someone people want to support
5. The method goes far deeper than just technical skills. It forces you to analyze your weaknesses and build confidence. It also has a highlight on service to others, emphasizing that humility and contributing to your community are essential for personal success.
6. The key to the system is daily execution and accountability. Once the 64-cell chart is complete, you turn the tasks and habits into a daily diary and a "Routine Check Sheet." It’s designed to transform abstract intentions into a measurable, daily practice.
The legend continues!
Shohei Ohtani is the NL MVP for the second straight season! https://t.co/aVC7HqxENQ tweet
Offshore
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EndGame Macro
A Rally With an Expiration Date
Both versions of the chart…BTC vs USD and BTC vs EUR are telling the same story, which is what makes them useful. Bitcoin didn’t just lose momentum in dollar terms; it lost momentum in euro terms too. That takes the maybe it’s just currency noise argument off the table.
You can see the pattern clearly: Bitcoin pushed into its highs, stalled out, and then rolled over while the longer term cycle curve (the pink line) already peaked and started bending down. That kind of timing mismatch, price still hanging near the top while the underlying cycle is already turning is usually how topping structures form. The momentum line at the bottom confirms it: strength has been leaking for months even while price was grinding near the highs.
Big picture this doesn’t look like the beginning of something. It looks like the part of the cycle where the market exhales and starts handing the baton to the downside.
The Near Term Window vs the Real Turn
The tricky part is that the next few months still give Bitcoin some breathing room. The macro setup into December and early January is probably the softest backdrop we’ll get for a while and with two Fed cuts already behind us, QT ending on December 1, and year end flows pushing more cash back into the system. Funding feels easier, not harder. That’s exactly the kind of environment where Bitcoin can stabilize after a sharp drop and put together a bounce.
And honestly, a bounce makes sense. Positioning got washed out, sentiment flipped fast, and the broader market still wants to believe in a constructive story into year end. You tend to get a reflex move in that kind of setup, a rally that feels strong, but doesn’t quite have the depth behind it to become a new trend.
But once you get into Q1 and especially into Q2, the tone shifts. Treasury starts rebuilding the TGA, tax season drains liquidity, and issuance ramps back up. With the RRP pool basically gone, that tightening hits bank reserves directly. You don’t need a dramatic shock for risk appetite to fade, the plumbing just gets a little less forgiving. Layer on a softening labor market, some pressure on earnings, and credit spreads that stop tightening, and the market becomes a lot more sensitive to downside surprises.
That’s usually when Bitcoin moves from buy the dip to sell the bounce.
So the cleanest way to think about it is this:
•Into year end and early January:
Bitcoin likely finds support and bounces. It’s a decent window for relief.
•Into Q1–Q2 2026:
Liquidity turns down, not up. That’s when Bitcoin usually struggles. The chart’s longer cycle curve is already pointing that way.
In other words the bounce is probably real, but it’s not the start of the next leg. It’s the last good breath before the harder part of the cycle shows up.
tweet
A Rally With an Expiration Date
Both versions of the chart…BTC vs USD and BTC vs EUR are telling the same story, which is what makes them useful. Bitcoin didn’t just lose momentum in dollar terms; it lost momentum in euro terms too. That takes the maybe it’s just currency noise argument off the table.
You can see the pattern clearly: Bitcoin pushed into its highs, stalled out, and then rolled over while the longer term cycle curve (the pink line) already peaked and started bending down. That kind of timing mismatch, price still hanging near the top while the underlying cycle is already turning is usually how topping structures form. The momentum line at the bottom confirms it: strength has been leaking for months even while price was grinding near the highs.
Big picture this doesn’t look like the beginning of something. It looks like the part of the cycle where the market exhales and starts handing the baton to the downside.
The Near Term Window vs the Real Turn
The tricky part is that the next few months still give Bitcoin some breathing room. The macro setup into December and early January is probably the softest backdrop we’ll get for a while and with two Fed cuts already behind us, QT ending on December 1, and year end flows pushing more cash back into the system. Funding feels easier, not harder. That’s exactly the kind of environment where Bitcoin can stabilize after a sharp drop and put together a bounce.
And honestly, a bounce makes sense. Positioning got washed out, sentiment flipped fast, and the broader market still wants to believe in a constructive story into year end. You tend to get a reflex move in that kind of setup, a rally that feels strong, but doesn’t quite have the depth behind it to become a new trend.
But once you get into Q1 and especially into Q2, the tone shifts. Treasury starts rebuilding the TGA, tax season drains liquidity, and issuance ramps back up. With the RRP pool basically gone, that tightening hits bank reserves directly. You don’t need a dramatic shock for risk appetite to fade, the plumbing just gets a little less forgiving. Layer on a softening labor market, some pressure on earnings, and credit spreads that stop tightening, and the market becomes a lot more sensitive to downside surprises.
That’s usually when Bitcoin moves from buy the dip to sell the bounce.
So the cleanest way to think about it is this:
•Into year end and early January:
Bitcoin likely finds support and bounces. It’s a decent window for relief.
•Into Q1–Q2 2026:
Liquidity turns down, not up. That’s when Bitcoin usually struggles. The chart’s longer cycle curve is already pointing that way.
In other words the bounce is probably real, but it’s not the start of the next leg. It’s the last good breath before the harder part of the cycle shows up.
Will Bitcoin bounce soon? Yes, within a few days (see my recent analysis).
But don’t get too excited—it won’t last long, likely just a couple of months.
The weekly chart’s longer cycles are pointing to a weak 2026. And this isn’t just in USD terms (the top), but also against other currencies, including the EUR (the bottom).
Interested in my STOCK MARKET OUTLOOK? Grab my FREE eBook "1-Year US Stock Market Outlook.” Download 👇
https://t.co/IgSRysWe1k
------------- tweet
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EndGame Macro
Fewer Companies, Bigger Buybacks And The Real Story
The number of US listed companies keeps drifting lower, while cumulative buybacks from the S&P 500 keep climbing almost in a straight line. But once you sit with it for a moment, it hits a deeper point about how the US market has quietly changed over the last 25 years.
The drop in listed companies isn’t because the economy withered. It’s because more of corporate America lives outside the public markets now. You’ve got founders selling to private equity instead of going public, big firms buying smaller ones before they ever reach scale, and regulations that make going public feel like more trouble than it’s worth. The result is a steady drip of delistings and acquisitions that slowly shrink the roster.
On the other side, the companies that are public especially the large ones have spent the last two decades aggressively buying back their own shares. Sometimes it’s funded by strong cash flows, sometimes by cheap debt, but the effect is the same: the supply of public equity keeps getting smaller.
Why It Matters
When you put those two forces together, you get a market where scarcity does a lot of the heavy lifting. You’ve got fewer public companies to choose from and fewer shares circulating from the companies that remain. Meanwhile, demand for equities only grows, because retirement accounts, index funds, sovereign wealth funds, and global investors are all piling into the same shrinking pool.
That combination helps explain why the US market looks so unstoppable compared to the rest of the world. It’s not just earnings strength or innovation stories, it’s the structure itself. The public market has become more concentrated, more top heavy, and more dependent on the same handful of giants that keep shrinking their float year after year.
It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean the market behaves differently. It’s more sensitive to what the big players do, and it’s more prone to long stretches where valuations stay elevated because the supply of investable public equity keeps tightening.
In a way, the chart is showing you the quiet engine behind two decades of US outperformance: consolidation, buybacks, and the slow disappearance of smaller public companies. It’s a reminder that the strength on the surface isn’t just cyclical, it’s structural.
tweet
Fewer Companies, Bigger Buybacks And The Real Story
The number of US listed companies keeps drifting lower, while cumulative buybacks from the S&P 500 keep climbing almost in a straight line. But once you sit with it for a moment, it hits a deeper point about how the US market has quietly changed over the last 25 years.
The drop in listed companies isn’t because the economy withered. It’s because more of corporate America lives outside the public markets now. You’ve got founders selling to private equity instead of going public, big firms buying smaller ones before they ever reach scale, and regulations that make going public feel like more trouble than it’s worth. The result is a steady drip of delistings and acquisitions that slowly shrink the roster.
On the other side, the companies that are public especially the large ones have spent the last two decades aggressively buying back their own shares. Sometimes it’s funded by strong cash flows, sometimes by cheap debt, but the effect is the same: the supply of public equity keeps getting smaller.
Why It Matters
When you put those two forces together, you get a market where scarcity does a lot of the heavy lifting. You’ve got fewer public companies to choose from and fewer shares circulating from the companies that remain. Meanwhile, demand for equities only grows, because retirement accounts, index funds, sovereign wealth funds, and global investors are all piling into the same shrinking pool.
That combination helps explain why the US market looks so unstoppable compared to the rest of the world. It’s not just earnings strength or innovation stories, it’s the structure itself. The public market has become more concentrated, more top heavy, and more dependent on the same handful of giants that keep shrinking their float year after year.
It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean the market behaves differently. It’s more sensitive to what the big players do, and it’s more prone to long stretches where valuations stay elevated because the supply of investable public equity keeps tightening.
In a way, the chart is showing you the quiet engine behind two decades of US outperformance: consolidation, buybacks, and the slow disappearance of smaller public companies. It’s a reminder that the strength on the surface isn’t just cyclical, it’s structural.
The number of US-listed companies is in a sharp decline:
The number of US-listed domestic companies has fallen below 4,000 this year, the lowest since 2020.
Since 2022, this count has dropped by -1,800, or -31%.
At this pace, the number of publicly listed companies could decline to the lowest on record as early as next year.
By comparison, about 6,500 firms were trading at the beginning of the century.
Meanwhile, cumulative corporate buybacks have reached a massive $12.7 trillion since 1998.
Big stocks will keep getting bigger. tweet
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EndGame Macro
The Truth About Reality We’re Not Ready to Admit
The Limits of Proof
These new papers claiming they’ve proven we’re not in a simulation sound confident, but once you actually read them, you see what they’re really ruling out. They argue the universe can’t be simulated because reality supposedly relies on non algorithmic understanding, something a computer could never reproduce. It’s an interesting argument, but it assumes any simulator would be bound by the same rules we’ve found from inside our own universe. That’s like a character in a video game insisting the developer can’t exist because the game physics don’t allow developers to exist. They’re only describing the box we’re in, not the world outside it.
And the Gödel angle they lean on, the idea that some truths can’t be fully captured by logic doesn’t really settle the question either. Maybe those incomplete edges are exactly what a simulation would disguise behind randomness. Maybe they’re artifacts of our own limits. It’s a clever mathematical argument, but it doesn’t close the door the way the headlines pretend it does.
The Moon, the Gaps, and the Feeling Something’s Off
Then you look at the stories we’ve told ourselves about our own history. We supposedly landed on the moon in 1969 with a computer weaker than the calculator on your phone… and then just stopped going. No bases. No tourism. No HD footage. No selfies with Earth hanging in the background. Whether you believe the moon landings happened exactly as written or not, the timeline still feels strange. Human beings don’t usually unlock a frontier and then ignore it for half a century. That gap, that mismatch between what we’re told and what feels plausible is the kind of thing that makes people wonder if the story we get is the full picture.
And that’s usually when the simulation question starts creeping in. Not because everything is fake, but because certain things don’t quite line up cleanly, and humans are wired to look for the bigger frame when the smaller one feels incomplete.
The Future That Makes the Theory Hard to Ignore
If you step back and look at our own technology curve, it becomes even harder to dismiss. Ten years ago, video games still looked like video games. AI was a gimmick. VR felt like a toy. Now we have photoreal graphics, AI that can hold convincing conversations, and immersive worlds that blur into real experience. If that’s what one decade looks like, imagine a hundred years. Imagine a thousand. It’s almost impossible to argue that advanced civilizations wouldn’t eventually reach a point where simulating something like us isn’t just possible, it’s trivial.
And that’s the whole tension…if simulation ever becomes possible, anywhere, at any point in the future, the odds we are the first generation become tiny. It’s far more likely that we’re somewhere down the chain rather than at the beginning of it. History is full of people who thought their moment was the center of everything. We’re probably not the exception.
What It Might Mean
Whether we’re in a simulation or not doesn’t automatically change the day to day. Pain would still be pain, love would still be love, choices would still matter. But it does mean the world might be built on rules or constraints we don’t fully understand. What we call laws of nature might just be the operating system. What we call mystery might be a boundary condition. And what scientists call non algorithmic understanding might just be a layer we’re not meant to access directly.
The truth is nobody actually knows what we’re living in. The physicists don’t know. The philosophers don’t know. The conspiracy theorists definitely don’t know. And the rest of us are just trying to make sense of a reality that feels deeper and stranger than the explanations we’re handed.
If anything, I’d say we understand far less about the nature of this place than we pretend.
🔥🚨BREAKING NEWS: UBC Okanagan Physicists just proved that the Universe isn’t a simulation a[...]
The Truth About Reality We’re Not Ready to Admit
The Limits of Proof
These new papers claiming they’ve proven we’re not in a simulation sound confident, but once you actually read them, you see what they’re really ruling out. They argue the universe can’t be simulated because reality supposedly relies on non algorithmic understanding, something a computer could never reproduce. It’s an interesting argument, but it assumes any simulator would be bound by the same rules we’ve found from inside our own universe. That’s like a character in a video game insisting the developer can’t exist because the game physics don’t allow developers to exist. They’re only describing the box we’re in, not the world outside it.
And the Gödel angle they lean on, the idea that some truths can’t be fully captured by logic doesn’t really settle the question either. Maybe those incomplete edges are exactly what a simulation would disguise behind randomness. Maybe they’re artifacts of our own limits. It’s a clever mathematical argument, but it doesn’t close the door the way the headlines pretend it does.
The Moon, the Gaps, and the Feeling Something’s Off
Then you look at the stories we’ve told ourselves about our own history. We supposedly landed on the moon in 1969 with a computer weaker than the calculator on your phone… and then just stopped going. No bases. No tourism. No HD footage. No selfies with Earth hanging in the background. Whether you believe the moon landings happened exactly as written or not, the timeline still feels strange. Human beings don’t usually unlock a frontier and then ignore it for half a century. That gap, that mismatch between what we’re told and what feels plausible is the kind of thing that makes people wonder if the story we get is the full picture.
And that’s usually when the simulation question starts creeping in. Not because everything is fake, but because certain things don’t quite line up cleanly, and humans are wired to look for the bigger frame when the smaller one feels incomplete.
The Future That Makes the Theory Hard to Ignore
If you step back and look at our own technology curve, it becomes even harder to dismiss. Ten years ago, video games still looked like video games. AI was a gimmick. VR felt like a toy. Now we have photoreal graphics, AI that can hold convincing conversations, and immersive worlds that blur into real experience. If that’s what one decade looks like, imagine a hundred years. Imagine a thousand. It’s almost impossible to argue that advanced civilizations wouldn’t eventually reach a point where simulating something like us isn’t just possible, it’s trivial.
And that’s the whole tension…if simulation ever becomes possible, anywhere, at any point in the future, the odds we are the first generation become tiny. It’s far more likely that we’re somewhere down the chain rather than at the beginning of it. History is full of people who thought their moment was the center of everything. We’re probably not the exception.
What It Might Mean
Whether we’re in a simulation or not doesn’t automatically change the day to day. Pain would still be pain, love would still be love, choices would still matter. But it does mean the world might be built on rules or constraints we don’t fully understand. What we call laws of nature might just be the operating system. What we call mystery might be a boundary condition. And what scientists call non algorithmic understanding might just be a layer we’re not meant to access directly.
The truth is nobody actually knows what we’re living in. The physicists don’t know. The philosophers don’t know. The conspiracy theorists definitely don’t know. And the rest of us are just trying to make sense of a reality that feels deeper and stranger than the explanations we’re handed.
If anything, I’d say we understand far less about the nature of this place than we pretend.
🔥🚨BREAKING NEWS: UBC Okanagan Physicists just proved that the Universe isn’t a simulation a[...]
Offshore
EndGame Macro The Truth About Reality We’re Not Ready to Admit The Limits of Proof These new papers claiming they’ve proven we’re not in a simulation sound confident, but once you actually read them, you see what they’re really ruling out. They argue the…
fter all and that we are all 100% real.
UBC Okanagan mathematically demonstrated that the universe cannot be simulated, using Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, scientists found that reality requires “non-algorithmic understanding,” something no computation can replicate.
This discovery disproves the simulation hypothesis and reveals that the universe’s foundations exist beyond any algorithmic system ‘and increases the likelihood of God being real.’ - Dom Lucre | Breaker of Narratives tweet
UBC Okanagan mathematically demonstrated that the universe cannot be simulated, using Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, scientists found that reality requires “non-algorithmic understanding,” something no computation can replicate.
This discovery disproves the simulation hypothesis and reveals that the universe’s foundations exist beyond any algorithmic system ‘and increases the likelihood of God being real.’ - Dom Lucre | Breaker of Narratives tweet