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Fiscal.ai
Apple v. NVIDIA
Which would you rather own at current prices?
Forward EV/EBIT:
$AAPL 28.9x
$NVDA 21.6x https://t.co/syaYxqk0HD
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Apple v. NVIDIA
Which would you rather own at current prices?
Forward EV/EBIT:
$AAPL 28.9x
$NVDA 21.6x https://t.co/syaYxqk0HD
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Quiver Quantitative
Senator Josh Hawley has proposed that healthcare spending be deducted from taxes. https://t.co/2IefiUGPBq
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Senator Josh Hawley has proposed that healthcare spending be deducted from taxes. https://t.co/2IefiUGPBq
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WealthyReadings
$PATH is up 37% since that post.
And no one said thank you.
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$PATH is up 37% since that post.
And no one said thank you.
Finished looking into $PATH: I’m not convinced, mainly due to ARR dollar growth deceleration.
I understand the bull case. But until the data backs it up, I’ll stay out.
That said, $PATH has one of the best chart on the market and reports next week.
Now onto $ZETA. Which one should I check next? tweet
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EndGame Macro
The IMF’s Stablecoin Warning Is Really a Roadmap for the Future of Money
Once you read past the surface optimism, the IMF paper is making a straightforward point that stablecoins aren’t growing because people suddenly fell in love with crypto, they’re growing because the global payments system is slow, fragmented, and expensive. And people are quietly opting out of that friction.
The IMF lays out the math. The two largest stablecoins have tripled in size since 2023, reaching a combined $260 billion, with $23 trillion in trading volume in 2024. Asia now processes more stablecoin activity than North America, and relative to GDP, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America stand out as the fastest adopters.
And the chart on page 3 of this shows the deeper truth that stablecoins today are mostly backed by U.S. Treasuries, meaning these crypto dollars are really just digital wrappers around the safest collateral pool on the planet.
But the IMF’s tone changes when it outlines the risks. Stablecoins make cross-border payments dramatically cheaper, some remittances still cost up to 20% yet those same efficiencies can hollow out weaker currencies, bypass capital controls, and erode monetary sovereignty.
When the IMF warns stablecoins could reshape capital flow and exchange rate dynamics, it’s really pointing at the stress building under emerging markets as global liquidity tightens.
And when it notes that regulation is uneven, oversight gaps encourage arbitrage, and some countries are even considering granting stablecoin issuers central bank liquidity, you can see the direction clearly. This isn’t about killing stablecoins. It’s about preparing to contain them.
Where this is actually heading
This is where the paper I read from the BIS titled “On Par: A Money View of Stablecoins” provides the missing frame. The BIS strips away the hype and says stablecoins are essentially on chain private dollar deposits, a digital replay of the eurodollar era.
And the BIS is blunt about the real weakness which isn’t solvency…it’s liquidity. A stablecoin can be fully backed and still collapse if everyone runs for the exit at once. The Terra collapse, the USDC break during SVB all of it highlights the same flaw that crypto has no dealer system, no lender of last resort, no credit elasticity. Without those, par is fragile. The BIS even calls current stabilization mechanisms primitive.
When you set that against today’s macro backdrop with higher rates, slower growth, geopolitical tension, the vulnerability becomes obvious. In stressed environments, people want settlement they can trust. Private tokens backed by assets that must be sold during panics don’t look like the final form of digital dollars. They look like the prototype.
My View
Stablecoins aren’t going away. They’re becoming the digital edge of the dollar system. But they won’t remain in their current wildcat form. They’re heading toward consolidation, regulation, and eventual absorption into the banking hierarchy not because regulators are excited about them, but because the alternative is losing visibility and control over global money flows.
Private issuers opened the door.
Macro stress is accelerating adoption.
And now states and major banks are moving to domesticate the model.
The BIS paper I read lays out the blueprint with tokenized deposits, regulated liability networks, and stablecoins anchored by the full banking apparatus. And the IMF’s reference to possible central bank liquidity access quietly confirms the same destination.
So the future isn’t stablecoins versus the system, it’s stablecoins becoming the system. A faster, programmable extension of the dollar order, built not outside the perimeter, but inside it.
That’s the real trajectory hiding in both reports. @SantiagoAuFund
Stablecoins’ influence is growing due to their interconnections with mainstream finance stemming from their potential use cases and asset backing. Their rapid growth high[...]
The IMF’s Stablecoin Warning Is Really a Roadmap for the Future of Money
Once you read past the surface optimism, the IMF paper is making a straightforward point that stablecoins aren’t growing because people suddenly fell in love with crypto, they’re growing because the global payments system is slow, fragmented, and expensive. And people are quietly opting out of that friction.
The IMF lays out the math. The two largest stablecoins have tripled in size since 2023, reaching a combined $260 billion, with $23 trillion in trading volume in 2024. Asia now processes more stablecoin activity than North America, and relative to GDP, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America stand out as the fastest adopters.
And the chart on page 3 of this shows the deeper truth that stablecoins today are mostly backed by U.S. Treasuries, meaning these crypto dollars are really just digital wrappers around the safest collateral pool on the planet.
But the IMF’s tone changes when it outlines the risks. Stablecoins make cross-border payments dramatically cheaper, some remittances still cost up to 20% yet those same efficiencies can hollow out weaker currencies, bypass capital controls, and erode monetary sovereignty.
When the IMF warns stablecoins could reshape capital flow and exchange rate dynamics, it’s really pointing at the stress building under emerging markets as global liquidity tightens.
And when it notes that regulation is uneven, oversight gaps encourage arbitrage, and some countries are even considering granting stablecoin issuers central bank liquidity, you can see the direction clearly. This isn’t about killing stablecoins. It’s about preparing to contain them.
Where this is actually heading
This is where the paper I read from the BIS titled “On Par: A Money View of Stablecoins” provides the missing frame. The BIS strips away the hype and says stablecoins are essentially on chain private dollar deposits, a digital replay of the eurodollar era.
And the BIS is blunt about the real weakness which isn’t solvency…it’s liquidity. A stablecoin can be fully backed and still collapse if everyone runs for the exit at once. The Terra collapse, the USDC break during SVB all of it highlights the same flaw that crypto has no dealer system, no lender of last resort, no credit elasticity. Without those, par is fragile. The BIS even calls current stabilization mechanisms primitive.
When you set that against today’s macro backdrop with higher rates, slower growth, geopolitical tension, the vulnerability becomes obvious. In stressed environments, people want settlement they can trust. Private tokens backed by assets that must be sold during panics don’t look like the final form of digital dollars. They look like the prototype.
My View
Stablecoins aren’t going away. They’re becoming the digital edge of the dollar system. But they won’t remain in their current wildcat form. They’re heading toward consolidation, regulation, and eventual absorption into the banking hierarchy not because regulators are excited about them, but because the alternative is losing visibility and control over global money flows.
Private issuers opened the door.
Macro stress is accelerating adoption.
And now states and major banks are moving to domesticate the model.
The BIS paper I read lays out the blueprint with tokenized deposits, regulated liability networks, and stablecoins anchored by the full banking apparatus. And the IMF’s reference to possible central bank liquidity access quietly confirms the same destination.
So the future isn’t stablecoins versus the system, it’s stablecoins becoming the system. A faster, programmable extension of the dollar order, built not outside the perimeter, but inside it.
That’s the real trajectory hiding in both reports. @SantiagoAuFund
Stablecoins’ influence is growing due to their interconnections with mainstream finance stemming from their potential use cases and asset backing. Their rapid growth high[...]
Offshore
EndGame Macro The IMF’s Stablecoin Warning Is Really a Roadmap for the Future of Money Once you read past the surface optimism, the IMF paper is making a straightforward point that stablecoins aren’t growing because people suddenly fell in love with crypto…
lights both promise and new challenges for policymakers. Read new IMF Blog: https://t.co/eVss5tPsFn https://t.co/uliR1gLnkn - IMF tweet
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EndGame Macro
Why College Feels Like A Bad Idea Right Now
A lot of younger people aren’t anti education. They’re reacting to a pretty rational mismatch in the fact that the price of the credential went up like it’s a luxury product, while the job market value of a lot of white collar entry roles started acting… normal. Risky. Cyclical.
That chart says it plainly. The share of unemployed Americans with four year degrees is climbing toward the mid 20% range. When degrees were rare, a diploma was a moat. Now it’s often just the ticket to enter a crowded room.
And the lived experience matters here. If you’re 22 and you watched older siblings take on serious debt, graduate into apply to 200 jobs land, and then compete for roles that don’t pay enough to justify the burn… you start doing math differently. Not ideological math. Monthly payment math.
College Is a Business And It Sells What It Can, Not What You Need
Universities don’t get rewarded for aligning majors with the labor market. They get rewarded for enrollment, retention, and tuition revenue. That incentive creates a quiet problem where schools keep producing degrees for paths where demand is shrinking, getting automated, or getting squeezed by globalization while marketing those paths like the old world still exists.
It’s not that these jobs vanish overnight. It’s that the work gets unbundled. A chunk gets automated. Another chunk gets offshored. The entry level ladder gets pulled up. And suddenly the degree doesn’t buy you a career track, it buys you a shot at one.
Meanwhile, credential inflation is real. Jobs that used to train people now ask for a bachelor’s just to filter resumes. So the degree becomes a cost of entry, not a payoff. That’s the psychological break…you paid a premium price for something that feels like a minimum requirement.
Healthcare And The Trades
If you want to think like an investor, you look for demand that’s stubborn and hard to outsource. Healthcare checks that box. An aging population doesn’t pause because rates are high. Chronic disease doesn’t take a soft landing. Someone still needs to show up like nurses, techs, radiology, respiratory, PT, home health, long term care. A lot of those roles are licensed, in person, and backed by structural need. That’s not hype. That’s demographics.
The trades are similar in a different way. You can’t outsource a broken compressor, a rewiring job, a leaky pipe, or a roof. You can’t Zoom an electrician. And in many places, the pipeline of skilled tradespeople is aging out faster than it’s being replaced. Add infrastructure work, reshoring, energy retrofits, and suddenly the boring jobs look like the smart ones.
So the shift you’re seeing isn’t college is worthless. It’s more specific…the blanket promise that any degree automatically pays is breaking. The winners will be paths that connect tightly to real demand, build scarce skills, and don’t rely on a fragile white collar ladder that’s getting narrower every year.
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Why College Feels Like A Bad Idea Right Now
A lot of younger people aren’t anti education. They’re reacting to a pretty rational mismatch in the fact that the price of the credential went up like it’s a luxury product, while the job market value of a lot of white collar entry roles started acting… normal. Risky. Cyclical.
That chart says it plainly. The share of unemployed Americans with four year degrees is climbing toward the mid 20% range. When degrees were rare, a diploma was a moat. Now it’s often just the ticket to enter a crowded room.
And the lived experience matters here. If you’re 22 and you watched older siblings take on serious debt, graduate into apply to 200 jobs land, and then compete for roles that don’t pay enough to justify the burn… you start doing math differently. Not ideological math. Monthly payment math.
College Is a Business And It Sells What It Can, Not What You Need
Universities don’t get rewarded for aligning majors with the labor market. They get rewarded for enrollment, retention, and tuition revenue. That incentive creates a quiet problem where schools keep producing degrees for paths where demand is shrinking, getting automated, or getting squeezed by globalization while marketing those paths like the old world still exists.
It’s not that these jobs vanish overnight. It’s that the work gets unbundled. A chunk gets automated. Another chunk gets offshored. The entry level ladder gets pulled up. And suddenly the degree doesn’t buy you a career track, it buys you a shot at one.
Meanwhile, credential inflation is real. Jobs that used to train people now ask for a bachelor’s just to filter resumes. So the degree becomes a cost of entry, not a payoff. That’s the psychological break…you paid a premium price for something that feels like a minimum requirement.
Healthcare And The Trades
If you want to think like an investor, you look for demand that’s stubborn and hard to outsource. Healthcare checks that box. An aging population doesn’t pause because rates are high. Chronic disease doesn’t take a soft landing. Someone still needs to show up like nurses, techs, radiology, respiratory, PT, home health, long term care. A lot of those roles are licensed, in person, and backed by structural need. That’s not hype. That’s demographics.
The trades are similar in a different way. You can’t outsource a broken compressor, a rewiring job, a leaky pipe, or a roof. You can’t Zoom an electrician. And in many places, the pipeline of skilled tradespeople is aging out faster than it’s being replaced. Add infrastructure work, reshoring, energy retrofits, and suddenly the boring jobs look like the smart ones.
So the shift you’re seeing isn’t college is worthless. It’s more specific…the blanket promise that any degree automatically pays is breaking. The winners will be paths that connect tightly to real demand, build scarce skills, and don’t rely on a fragile white collar ladder that’s getting narrower every year.
College education value is collapsing https://t.co/iO9UpUIt5m tweet
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EndGame Macro
Why College Feels Like A Bad Idea Right Now
A lot of younger people aren’t anti education. They’re reacting to a pretty rational mismatch in the fact that the price of the credential went up like it’s a luxury product, while the job market value of a lot of white collar entry roles started acting… normal. Risky. Cyclical.
That chart says it plainly. The share of unemployed Americans with four year degrees is climbing toward the mid 20% range. When degrees were rare, a diploma was a moat. Now it’s often just the ticket to enter a crowded room.
And the lived experience matters here. If you’re 22 and you watched older siblings take on serious debt, graduate into “apply to 200 jobs” land, and then compete for roles that don’t pay enough to justify the burn… you start doing math differently. Not ideological math. Monthly payment math.
College Is a Business And It Sells What It Can, Not What You Need
Universities don’t get rewarded for aligning majors with the labor market. They get rewarded for enrollment, retention, and tuition revenue. That incentive creates a quiet problem where schools keep producing degrees for paths where demand is shrinking, getting automated, or getting squeezed by globalization while marketing those paths like the old world still exists.
It’s not that these jobs vanish overnight. It’s that the work gets unbundled. A chunk gets automated. Another chunk gets offshored. The entry level ladder gets pulled up. And suddenly the degree doesn’t buy you a career track, it buys you a shot at one.
Meanwhile, credential inflation is real. Jobs that used to train people now ask for a bachelor’s just to filter resumes. So the degree becomes a cost of entry, not a payoff. That’s the psychological break…you paid a premium price for something that feels like a minimum requirement.
Healthcare And The Trades
If you want to think like an investor, you look for demand that’s stubborn and hard to outsource. Healthcare checks that box. An aging population doesn’t pause because rates are high. Chronic disease doesn’t take a soft landing. Someone still needs to show up like nurses, techs, radiology, respiratory, PT, home health, long term care. A lot of those roles are licensed, in person, and backed by structural need. That’s not hype. That’s demographics.
The trades are similar in a different way. You can’t outsource a broken compressor, a rewiring job, a leaky pipe, or a roof. You can’t Zoom an electrician. And in many places, the pipeline of skilled tradespeople is aging out faster than it’s being replaced. Add infrastructure work, reshoring, energy retrofits, and suddenly the boring jobs look like the smart ones.
So the shift you’re seeing isn’t college is worthless. It’s more specific…the blanket promise that any degree automatically pays is breaking. The winners will be paths that connect tightly to real demand, build scarce skills, and don’t rely on a fragile white collar ladder that’s getting narrower every year.
tweet
Why College Feels Like A Bad Idea Right Now
A lot of younger people aren’t anti education. They’re reacting to a pretty rational mismatch in the fact that the price of the credential went up like it’s a luxury product, while the job market value of a lot of white collar entry roles started acting… normal. Risky. Cyclical.
That chart says it plainly. The share of unemployed Americans with four year degrees is climbing toward the mid 20% range. When degrees were rare, a diploma was a moat. Now it’s often just the ticket to enter a crowded room.
And the lived experience matters here. If you’re 22 and you watched older siblings take on serious debt, graduate into “apply to 200 jobs” land, and then compete for roles that don’t pay enough to justify the burn… you start doing math differently. Not ideological math. Monthly payment math.
College Is a Business And It Sells What It Can, Not What You Need
Universities don’t get rewarded for aligning majors with the labor market. They get rewarded for enrollment, retention, and tuition revenue. That incentive creates a quiet problem where schools keep producing degrees for paths where demand is shrinking, getting automated, or getting squeezed by globalization while marketing those paths like the old world still exists.
It’s not that these jobs vanish overnight. It’s that the work gets unbundled. A chunk gets automated. Another chunk gets offshored. The entry level ladder gets pulled up. And suddenly the degree doesn’t buy you a career track, it buys you a shot at one.
Meanwhile, credential inflation is real. Jobs that used to train people now ask for a bachelor’s just to filter resumes. So the degree becomes a cost of entry, not a payoff. That’s the psychological break…you paid a premium price for something that feels like a minimum requirement.
Healthcare And The Trades
If you want to think like an investor, you look for demand that’s stubborn and hard to outsource. Healthcare checks that box. An aging population doesn’t pause because rates are high. Chronic disease doesn’t take a soft landing. Someone still needs to show up like nurses, techs, radiology, respiratory, PT, home health, long term care. A lot of those roles are licensed, in person, and backed by structural need. That’s not hype. That’s demographics.
The trades are similar in a different way. You can’t outsource a broken compressor, a rewiring job, a leaky pipe, or a roof. You can’t Zoom an electrician. And in many places, the pipeline of skilled tradespeople is aging out faster than it’s being replaced. Add infrastructure work, reshoring, energy retrofits, and suddenly the boring jobs look like the smart ones.
So the shift you’re seeing isn’t college is worthless. It’s more specific…the blanket promise that any degree automatically pays is breaking. The winners will be paths that connect tightly to real demand, build scarce skills, and don’t rely on a fragile white collar ladder that’s getting narrower every year.
College education value is collapsing https://t.co/iO9UpUIt5m tweet
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Quiver Quantitative
JUST IN: Representative Melanie Stansbury will sign Rep. Luna's discharge petition to force a vote on a congressional stock trading ban.
Now at 17 signatures. https://t.co/EL9mG77Jm3
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JUST IN: Representative Melanie Stansbury will sign Rep. Luna's discharge petition to force a vote on a congressional stock trading ban.
Now at 17 signatures. https://t.co/EL9mG77Jm3
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Wasteland Capital
Apart from my earnings reviews, I’ve only tweeted five new cases on here over the last year.
They ended up the #1 Mag7 YTD $GOOG, the #1 Semi YTD $MU & #1 China LargeCap YTD $BABA. Plus 2 🚀 smallcaps, $AEO & $LYFT
Average return +111% currently.
Less is more, as they say. https://t.co/LGr5bglq7t
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Apart from my earnings reviews, I’ve only tweeted five new cases on here over the last year.
They ended up the #1 Mag7 YTD $GOOG, the #1 Semi YTD $MU & #1 China LargeCap YTD $BABA. Plus 2 🚀 smallcaps, $AEO & $LYFT
Average return +111% currently.
Less is more, as they say. https://t.co/LGr5bglq7t
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EndGame Macro
When High Valuations Meet Rising Unemployment, Something Has to Give
This chart looks complicated, but the message is pretty simple. The black line up top….the 5 year CAPE smooths out the noise and shows you how expensive the market really is relative to earnings. Sitting near 32, it’s in territory you only see when investors are pricing in a very optimistic future like in the late 90s, the post COVID boom, and a handful of mid century peaks. Those periods didn’t always end in a crash, but they almost always led to years where returns came in weaker than hoped because so much optimism was already baked into the price.
In plain terms we’re paying premium prices for earnings that haven’t arrived yet.
The lower half of the chart, the equity risk premium makes that clearer. Most versions barely compensate you for taking equity risk over simply sitting in bonds. And the simplest measure, earnings yield minus the risk free rate, is basically flat. When unemployment is rising and growth is cooling, that’s not a great cushion. Models can assume strong future earnings, but the real economy doesn’t care about those assumptions once the cycle turns.
Where the Pressure Builds in a Downturn
High valuations can float for a while, but they become extremely sensitive once the macro tone shifts. Rising unemployment pushes companies to cut hours, freeze hiring, and protect margins. Earnings expectations start sliding. And from a CAPE of 32, the market doesn’t have much room to take a punch.
In a stronger environment, falling long term rates might soften the blow. But if we slide into recession and long yields stay sticky whether because of fiscal pressure, heavy issuance, or lingering inflation expectations you get the worst mix where earnings weaken while the discount rate refuses to give you relief. That’s when valuations find air pockets.
And even if the Fed responds with more sustained cuts or even QE, that doesn’t stop the downside immediately. We’ve seen this before. In 2008–09, the Fed unleashed QE and slashed rates to zero and stocks kept falling, unemployment kept climbing, and the real economy kept deteriorating. Liquidity shows up in the financial pipes instantly, but it doesn’t reach Main Street for 18–24 months. During that lag, markets can still reprice lower because the recession mechanics are still grinding forward.
That’s why fragility replaces optimism in this kind of environment. Investors shift from asking “How high can this go?” to “How much am I being paid to take this risk?” And based on this chart, the answer is: not much.
My Honest Read
This chart doesn’t just whisper asymmetry with unemployment rising and recession signals stacking up, it says it outright. The upside narrows because valuations are already stretched. The downside widens because earnings are likely to soften, and the cushion underneath is thin.
This isn’t predicting a crash. It’s acknowledging that when you enter a downturn from one of the most expensive starting points in history, the margin for error is tiny. And even aggressive Fed easing doesn’t flip the cycle instantly, history shows the market can continue falling while policy is easing, simply because the real economy hasn’t finished correcting.
In that kind of backdrop, today’s stability feels less like strength and more like veneer. A high gloss surface covering cracks beneath it. And veneer eventually gives way, not because markets panic, but because the fundamentals finally pull the price back to where the cycle says it belongs.
tweet
When High Valuations Meet Rising Unemployment, Something Has to Give
This chart looks complicated, but the message is pretty simple. The black line up top….the 5 year CAPE smooths out the noise and shows you how expensive the market really is relative to earnings. Sitting near 32, it’s in territory you only see when investors are pricing in a very optimistic future like in the late 90s, the post COVID boom, and a handful of mid century peaks. Those periods didn’t always end in a crash, but they almost always led to years where returns came in weaker than hoped because so much optimism was already baked into the price.
In plain terms we’re paying premium prices for earnings that haven’t arrived yet.
The lower half of the chart, the equity risk premium makes that clearer. Most versions barely compensate you for taking equity risk over simply sitting in bonds. And the simplest measure, earnings yield minus the risk free rate, is basically flat. When unemployment is rising and growth is cooling, that’s not a great cushion. Models can assume strong future earnings, but the real economy doesn’t care about those assumptions once the cycle turns.
Where the Pressure Builds in a Downturn
High valuations can float for a while, but they become extremely sensitive once the macro tone shifts. Rising unemployment pushes companies to cut hours, freeze hiring, and protect margins. Earnings expectations start sliding. And from a CAPE of 32, the market doesn’t have much room to take a punch.
In a stronger environment, falling long term rates might soften the blow. But if we slide into recession and long yields stay sticky whether because of fiscal pressure, heavy issuance, or lingering inflation expectations you get the worst mix where earnings weaken while the discount rate refuses to give you relief. That’s when valuations find air pockets.
And even if the Fed responds with more sustained cuts or even QE, that doesn’t stop the downside immediately. We’ve seen this before. In 2008–09, the Fed unleashed QE and slashed rates to zero and stocks kept falling, unemployment kept climbing, and the real economy kept deteriorating. Liquidity shows up in the financial pipes instantly, but it doesn’t reach Main Street for 18–24 months. During that lag, markets can still reprice lower because the recession mechanics are still grinding forward.
That’s why fragility replaces optimism in this kind of environment. Investors shift from asking “How high can this go?” to “How much am I being paid to take this risk?” And based on this chart, the answer is: not much.
My Honest Read
This chart doesn’t just whisper asymmetry with unemployment rising and recession signals stacking up, it says it outright. The upside narrows because valuations are already stretched. The downside widens because earnings are likely to soften, and the cushion underneath is thin.
This isn’t predicting a crash. It’s acknowledging that when you enter a downturn from one of the most expensive starting points in history, the margin for error is tiny. And even aggressive Fed easing doesn’t flip the cycle instantly, history shows the market can continue falling while policy is easing, simply because the real economy hasn’t finished correcting.
In that kind of backdrop, today’s stability feels less like strength and more like veneer. A high gloss surface covering cracks beneath it. And veneer eventually gives way, not because markets panic, but because the fundamentals finally pull the price back to where the cycle says it belongs.
tweet