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EndGame Macro
The Day the Plumbing Spoke Louder Than the Fed

If you look at today in isolation, it feels messy, SOFR jumping over the Fed’s ceiling, the repo facility getting tapped, global yields drifting higher, USD/JPY finally backing off, and Bitcoin getting knocked straight down the elevator shaft. But when you put all the pieces together, the story is much cleaner…the Fed may have ended QT on paper, but the underlying funding conditions are still tight enough that the market is quietly forcing the transition. The plumbing is speaking louder than the policy statement.

The Funding Market Is Calling The Bluff

SOFR shouldn’t be sitting above the Fed’s upper bound for days at a time, and it definitely shouldn’t be above the discount window rate. That only happens when the system is brushing up against real balance sheet limits. Banks and dealers aren’t paying a premium for dollars because they want to, they’re doing it because private liquidity has dried up at the margin. And the moment the spread to the Fed’s standing repo facility got too wide, we saw what always happens…dealers finally swallowed their pride and tapped the SRF for $25B. That’s a clear sign that QT had reached its natural stopping point. The Fed ending QT wasn’t proactive. It was reactive.

Global Yields Are Repricing the New Reality

At the same time, long end yields around the world are drifting higher, not lower. That’s not what you normally see after two rate cuts and the end of QT. It’s what you see when the market starts questioning the fiscal paths of major economies, and when Japan once the quiet anchor holding down global term premiums begins to move. JGBs at multi decade highs and USD/JPY finally rolling over is the first real sign that the yen carry framework is shifting. When Japan wobbles, it doesn’t stay local. It feeds into credit, into duration trades, into every corner of global risk taking.

The Risk Trades Are the First to Crack

Bitcoin’s sudden drop fits into that framework almost perfectly. Crypto has been living off easy funding and one directional narratives: Fed is done, QT ending, dollar peaking, liquidity returning. But when SOFR jumps, when the SRF is tapped, when long end yields rise instead of fall, and when the yen carry starts to unwind, the high beta trades feel the stress first. Leveraged longs unwind, liquidity thins, stops cascade, and the move becomes dramatic. It’s not about Bitcoin fundamentally, it’s about macro balance sheets being forced to derisk.

The Bigger Picture

So the real takeaway isn’t that something broke. It’s that the post 2020 regime of free carry and painless leverage is fading, and the shift is starting in the pipes rather than the headlines. The Fed ended QT because it had to. Funding markets are tight because balance sheets are full. Global yields are rising because the world is waking up to the cost of fiscal expansion. And the risk assets getting hit, starting with Bitcoin are simply the first places where tight money shows up.

That’s the story today is telling if you’re listening.

Standing Repo Facility (SRF) just tapped for $25bln https://t.co/MGhKDHM34G
- Robert (infra 🏛️⌛️)
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Quiver Quantitative
JUST IN: Democratic candidate Aftyn Behn is now being given a 14% chance to win the Tennessee House special election tomorrow.

It's a deep-red district, that Trump won by 22 points. https://t.co/eexFPHOZsb
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AkhenOsiris
Arete upgrades to Buy:

$U
$TTWO
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AkhenOsiris
$CRWD Announcements at AWS re:Invent

CrowdStrike unveils real-time cloud detection technology at AWS re:Invent

CrowdStrike Stops Cloud Attacks in Seconds with Real-Time Cloud Detection and Response Innovations

CrowdStrike launches pay-as-you-go pricing for AWS security products

CrowdStrike Operationalizes and Secures Agentic AI Workloads on AWS

CrowdStrike Advances Next-Gen SIEM and Cloud Security Access on AWS with Streamlined Onboarding, Flexible Pricing, and Cost-Efficient Data Access
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EndGame Macro
https://t.co/XbmqvBCIBT

BREAKING: MicroStrategy, $MSTR, falls over -7% on the day to its lowest level since October 2024.

The stock is now down -55% since October 6th in one of its steepest declines on record. https://t.co/Tx79iTLOhC
- The Kobeissi Letter
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Wasteland Capital
Bottom 15 of the Nasdaq 100 YTD.

Some real trash on here but only 12 stocks with a >20% drawdown, not bad. $TTD at the far bottom. Haha! Itoldyouso exhibit 5398.

If your fund manager was long any of this sh*t through the whole year, take your hard-earned money out today. Now. https://t.co/udiGtkMgvk
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WealthyReadings
The $GOOG Cloud $AMZN AWS partnership isn’t getting nearly enough attention on here.

It is a massive game changer with lots of implications.

Cloud interconnectivity has been a major bottleneck for more than a decade, slowing development with technical complexity & adding massive costs for companies operating across multiple cloud providers - necessary for security and reliability.

A fast & native interconnect between two of the most used clouds changes that. It simplifies multi-cloud architectures and can save companies billions while giving them far more flexibility in how they deploy and manage compute workloads.

For example, companies will now be able to leverage compute features from both AWS and Google Cloud for the same app and move data between them quickly and cheaply. That means they can use the best tool from each provider without being locked into one ecosystem or forced into expensive & slow data transfers.

The effect on compute demand is tough to predict. Bears could say that companies will no longer need to duplicate workloads across clouds, reducing overall compute need. Bulls can argue that this bridge unlocks new use cases that were previously too slow, complex or costly, driving more demand, not less.

Another key angle: $GOOG TPUs become much more accessible. AWS customers can now offload only the portions of their workloads that benefit from TPU acceleration, without migrating their entire stack to Google Cloud and commiting there.

It will take time for companies to migrate and use this feature but make no mistake: this is a massive game changer.

The world of tech and innovation became easier, faster and cheaper today. And that’s a big deal.
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Dimitry Nakhla | Babylon Capital®
RT @DimitryNakhla: A quality valuation analysis on $MSFT 🧘🏽‍♂️

•NTM P/E Ratio: 29.25x
•5-Year Mean: 30.92x

•NTM FCF Yield: 1.98%
•5-Year Mean: 2.80%

As you can see, $MSFT appears to be trading near fair value on an earnings basis

Going forward, investors can expect to receive ~6% MORE in earnings per share & ~29% LESS in FCF per share🧠***

Before we get into valuation, let’s take a look at why $MSFT is a quality business

BALANCE SHEET
•Cash & Equivalents: $102.01B
•Long-Term Debt: $35.38B

$MSFT has an excellent balance sheet, an AAA S&P Credit Rating & 58x FFO Interest Coverage Ratio

RETURN ON CAPITAL
•2021: 31.1%
•2022: 34.0%
•2023: 30.9%
•2024: 29.7%
•2025: 28.0%

RETURN ON EQUITY
•2021: 47.1%
•2022: 47.2%
•2023: 38.8%
•2024: 37.1%
•2025: 33.3%

$MSFT has great return metrics, highlighting the financial efficiency of the business

REVENUE
•2021: $168.09B
•2026E: $326.83B
•CAGR: 14.22%

FREE CASH FLOW🆗*
•2021: $56.12B
•2026E: $75.70B
•CAGR: 6.17%

*This is largely due to heavy AI-related reinvestment — current 2028 FCF estimate $116.45B

NORMALIZED EPS
•2021: $7.97
•2026E: $16.10
•CAGR: 15.10%

SHARE BUYBACKS
•2016 Shares Outstanding: 8.01B
•LTM Shares Outstanding: 7.46B

By reducing its shares outstanding ~7%, $MSFT increased its EPS by ~8% (assuming 0 growth)

MARGINS
•LTM Gross Margins: 68.8%
•LTM Operating Margins: 46.3%
•LTM Net Income Margins: 35.7%

PAID DIVIDENDS
•2015: $1.24
•2025: $3.32
•CAGR: 10.34%

***NOW TO VALUATION 🧠

As stated above, investors can expect to receive ~6% MORE in EPS & ~29% LESS in FCF per share

Using Benjamin Graham’s 2G rule of thumb, $MSFT has to grow earnings at a 14.63% CAGR over the next several years to justify its valuation

Today, analysts anticipate 2026 - 2028 EPS growth over the next few years to be more than the (14.63%) required growth rate:

2026E: $16.10 (18% YoY) *FY Jun

2027E: $18.73 (16% YoY)
2028E: $22.27 (18% YoY)

$MSFT has an excellent track record of meeting analyst estimates ~2 years out, so let’s assume $MSFT ends 2028 with $22.27 in EPS & see its CAGR potential assuming different multiples

32x P/E: $712💵 … ~16.7% CAGR

30x P/E: $668💵 … ~13.9% CAGR

29x P/E: $646💵 … ~12.4% CAGR

28x P/E: $623💵 … ~10.9% CAGR

27x P/E: $601💵 … ~9.4% CAGR

As you can see, we’d have to assume a 28x multiple for $MSFT to have attractive return potential

At 27x earnings $MSFT has ok CAGR potential

$MSFT is one of the highest quality companies in the world & is firing on all cylinders

Although I wouldn’t want to rely on a >30x multiple, I feel comfortable accumulating $MSFT shares at ~$485💵 while relying on 28x - 29x

I consider $MSFT a steal with a large margin of safety at $440💵, where I can reasonably expect ~12% CAGR while assuming a more conservative 26x
___

𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐂𝐋𝐎𝐒𝐔𝐑𝐄‼️

𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐞𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐩𝐮𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐭𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐝𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞, 𝐚𝐧 𝐨𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫, 𝐨𝐫 𝐚 𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐮𝐲 𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲.

𝐁𝐚𝐛𝐲𝐥𝐨𝐧 𝐂𝐚𝐩𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥® 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐲 𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐝. 𝐀𝐧𝐲 𝐨𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐩𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐮𝐛𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐞.

𝐈𝐧𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐨𝐛𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐲 𝐨𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬. 𝐏𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐞 𝐟𝐮𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐬.
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memenodes
Wife: “Please sell some of your crypto, our children need food”

Me: https://t.co/Opn530ZytM
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