reason_passion @GpgMain

In defending Scott Bessent’s foray into the long end of the Treasury curve (Mr. Intervention), Donald Trump had the temerity to publicly lament that interest rates are “artificially high” and “ridiculous.” But what is not “artificial,” and is truly “ridiculous,” is that during his time in office, the national debt has ballooned by nearly $12 trillion. In other words, 30% of all the federal debt the United States has incurred in its 250-year history has come under his watch. Can’t blame Joe Biden for this one.

The 10-year rolling change in the US dollar remains one of the most important macro developments in the world today. We are likely witnessing the beginning of a secular decline in the dollar — a necessary adjustment to the significant trade deficit the US economy faces today. At the same time: The rest of the world can hardly tolerate another sustained period of dollar strength. The suppression of yields and a structurally weaker dollar are likely to be two of the defining macro forces of this decade. tavicosta.substack.com/p/seeds-of-an-…

Risk of a new age of financial repression is rising ft.trib.al/aA00qXV

“The Fed needs clear market signals, as unfiltered as possible.” -Kevin Warsh, while Scott Bessent is running around doing Treasury interventions

Interesting that the 10-yr Treasury yield experienced a major reversal to 4.726% after an initial rally on Warsh's speech at 10AM EST to 4.66% (surely the initial rally was algo-driven). Anyone can talk tough ("hawkish") about inflation, as Fed chairmen almost always do, but it's another matter to act tough (hike rates) - especially with Trump administration pressure to do otherwise. Better test will come on Sept. 15-16 (next FOMC meeting).

WSJ: "Anthropic more than doubled its revenue to $11.6 billion in the second quarter. To put its more than $30 trillion vision in context, the 191 technology companies in the S&P 1500 brought in $2.4 trillion in revenue last year, according to FactSet." Another way of looking at absurdity of the $30 trillion addressable market claim: annual U.S. GDP is currently $32.5 trillion. And yet this nonsense (wild proclamations and predictions) is allowed to continue so that Wall St. & Silly-con-Valley can extract as much money from unwitting "investors" as possible, before the inevitable stock market bubble collapses. wsj.com/tech/ai/anthro…

I'm looking at a summary of an analyst report on Salesforce's numbers last night (20% stock target price upgrade, of course) and I see this explanation: "NNAOV growth was the strongest in four years and significantly outpaced AOV growth, attrition was near record lows, contract duration improved across both new business and renewals, and CRPO accelerated to 14% constant currency, a point ahead of guidance" NNAOV, AOV and CRPO?? Whatever happened to sales & earnings and balance sheet changes? Oh yeah - they don't look so good. Salesforce revenues (+10.8% Y/Y - includes price hikes/inflation). Income from operations (DOWN slightly year-over-year - the big gain in EPS was entirely due to " $2.6 billion of "gains on strategic investments." And the balance sheet: A total wreck. YTD, Debt nearly quadrupled to $39B, total assets declined, total liabilities jumped 34% and stockholders' equity plummeted 35%. I can hear the analysts' refrain on the conference call now: "Nice quarter guys!"

Ever notice that these days whenever it's a "Chips On!" day in the market/casino, as it is today thanks to the hype from Mr. Leather Jacket, it always seems to be an "Apple Off" day - even when there's no news? Also, other big-cap stocks such as the hyperscalers tend to fall too. MSFT, META, AMZN & GOOGL are all lower in the pre-market this AM. Fundamentally, It doesn't make much sense to me unless.... investors/speculators are running low on the fuel (money) to propel all the big-cap stocks higher at the same time?

So True!

Ryan Hickey CPA @nhryanhickey

4 weeks ago

@htsfhickey That is the beauty of Non-GAAP metrics. It is only limited by your imagination. Especially during bubbles. hickeyadvisors.com/post/do-you-be…

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Not good news for Apple when its primary competitor's (Samsung) phone business is willing to eat a lot of the margin hit from skyrocketing memory costs in order to gain market share - leading to "humongous" 2026 losses. Meanwhile, Samsung's arms-length operating semiconductor memory business reaps windfall profits. Apple doesn't make memory semiconductors - putting them in a difficult position competitively. Think AAPL's historically high $4.7 trillion market cap, 37 P/E and 10 Price/Sales ratio takes this into account? The answer is no because we're in a historic stock market bubble (for now - until it busts). digitimes.com/news/a20260827…

The boys on Wall St. are trying their best to send investors home happy over the weekend following a rough week for stocks. But can they really pull it off if the bond market keeps sinking (yields climbing) at this rate?

So many imposters on X trying to steal money from people. Reminder: The ONLY social media platform I'm on is X and it's this account only. I don't "share real-time alerts" anywhere.

Romano/Secretary @BuckFlora33271

a month ago

@htsfhickey Many of my Twitter followers have already joined my WhatsApp🚨.. I share my real-time TRADE alert (entry & exit points) on WhatsApp, free to join✅ I POST ALL TRADES FOR FREE🔥 🚨 Copy search input Reply “join” to WhatsApp: +16085170031 WhatsApp link 👉: wa.me/16085170031/?t…

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Job cuts at Apple are relatively rare and a couple of years ago CEO Tim Cook described layoffs at Apple as a "last resort." Apple claimed that the layoffs described in the Bloomberg story are "to evolve our business to deliver the best experiences for our users." I'm guessing it has more to do with an attempt to partially offset the building margin pressures for its hardware products (memory costs skyrocketing) and a slowdown in its high margin services business. These numbers (of cuts) won't make much of a dent, however. finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/…

Latest attempt by the Treasury Dept. to manipulate long-term bond yields lower (because all the other pronouncements haven't worked). But there's really nothing new here. Treasury almost always takes down its TGA balance in advance of elections in order to stimulate the economy. cnbc.com/2026/08/24/bes…

This Stan Druckenmiller opinion piece in the WSJ today is brilliantly written and 100% accurate! Everyone needs to read it - especially the Treasury Secretary and whoever in the administration and on Wall St. that might have pressured him into taking such an anti-free market approach. wsj.com/opinion/let-th…

At the current pace that the National Debt is growing, it will hit $40 trillion within the next couple of weeks. One never knows which straw will be the one that "breaks the camel's back" - leading to a debt crisis. But we keep testing fate by piling the straws on - government spending with abandon - and without giving a scintilla of thought about changing the bad behavior. Possibly accelerating the day of reckoning are the egomaniacal tech CEO billionaires suffering from a bad case of FOMO engaged in the greatest capex spending binge in the country's history, while increasingly tapping into the same well of funding (debt markets) the government needs to fund its debts and deficits. Despite the current euphoria amongst (massively overleveraged) investors, this is the farthest thing from a "goldilocks" environment. Prepare accordingly.

Methinks Mr. Bessent must have received a "heads up" from Wall St. on the order book for today's 20-year Treasury auction (meaning it was poor). Desperation time. Trying to control (manipulate) the long end of the market which had become increasingly problematic (for good reason - U.S. borrowing is out of control). Not exactly a "free market" action. But the increasingly favored true "store of value" (in much of the world) - gold - immediately jumped nearly $100 vs. the old store of value - the U.S. dollar (as it should). cnbc.com/2026/08/19/tre…

New @nberpubs: "Do Minimum Wages Help Worker in Poor and Low-Income Families?" nber.org/papers/w35628#… "We find adverse – rather than beneficial – effects of minimum wages on the employment, hours, and earnings of initially-employed low-wage workers in poor and low-income families" 😲

First line from Wall Street Journal story by James Mackintosh this week titled: "Scott Bessent’s yen trade has unintended consequences for the markets": "The joint U.S.-Japan support of the yen is unusual. The way it is being financed is unprecedented, and adds liquidity when the punch bowl of the U.S. economy and markets is already overflowing." Spiking the punch bowl by adding liquidity to an out-of-control stock market mania is not exactly 'putting the brakes on' - as Bessent described as a better option to deal with "euphoric markets" last year. Bessent on NBC’s Meet the Press* on Sunday, March 16, 2025: “I’ve been in the investment business for 35 years, and I can tell you that corrections are healthy. They’re normal,” Bessent said. “What’s not healthy is straight up, that you get these euphoric markets. That’s how you get a financial crisis. It would have been much healthier if someone had put the brakes on in ’06, ’07. We wouldn’t have had the problems in ’08.” U.S. Treasury Dept. must have been mighty concerned about fragility in the U.S. bond market and the potential impact of Japanese U.S. Treasury bond selling if they hadn't acted to intervene. Might have been the expedient approach - but won't it make the problems lurking in the financial market even worse? msn.com/en-us/money/ec…

DIGITIMES headline today: "Radiant braces for Apple delays as auto, AI PC lift growth" Radiant is Apple’s primary supplier of Backlight Units (BLUs) used in LCD- and Mini-LED-based MacBooks, iPads, and iMacs. Reportedly, new product shipments (of a new MacBook or iPad model) are slipping out of 2026 into Q1 2027 Yesterday from a Bloomberg story: "Supply-chain checks indicate that the company "has cancelled the 20th anniversary all-glass iPhone model due to poor production yield" Headline yesterday from DRAMeXchange: "iPhone 18 Pro BOM (bill of materials) Cost Expected to Surge Nearly 40%, Leaving Apple to Sacrifice Margins to Sustain Shipments, Says TrendForce" Thursday's story from DIGITIMES titled: "Apple scrambles to secure DRAM as US$1 billion worth of iPhone 18 chips reportedly await packaging" From TF International securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo (based in Taiwan) report yesterday: "My industry checks suggest that Apple has indeed scaled back its hardware shipment plans this year due to memory shortages" It's beyond me why anyone would want to own AAPL stock at an historically high $4.5T market cap, 35.1 P/E and 10 price-to-sales ratio at this juncture. Seems to me, "Investors" have become more and more brain dead (or is it just brazen?) as the tech mania rolls on. Could lead to a rude awakening. Apple is a casualty of the current GenAI datacenter capacity building binge, not a beneficiary. Tim Cook's stepping down as CEO in 3 weeks may be timely. digitimes.com/news/a20260807…