🦔New newsletter is out: Shutdown cuts Q4 growth by 1.5%, tech rotation accelerates as mega-caps shift to debt-heavy models, and major institutions warn about AI spillover effects while Goldman/Morgan Stanley predict 10-20% equity declines. https://t.co/lCcIriGvva

🦔Popular economist David McWilliams says the AI boom is "undoubtedly going to crash" because companies are investing massive amounts in GPUs he calls "digital lettuce" that rapidly becomes outdated. "Technological change suggests that if you buy a GPU today, the chip is going to

🦔Tyson Foods is closing a major beef plant in Lexington, Nebraska with 3,200 employees in January and reducing operations at an Amarillo, Texas facility affecting 1,700 workers. US cattle supplies dropped to their lowest level in nearly 75 years after years of drought burned up

🦔China's house prices have fallen for 40 straight months, with October's 3.5% annualized decline the fastest in a year. Yet Goldman Sachs just raised its China GDP growth forecast from 4.9% to 5%. The juxtaposition reveals the economy is being propped up by debt-fueled public

🦔Let me explain how companies are hiding hundreds of billions in debt using accounting structures that are technically legal but recreate the opacity that triggered past financial crises. Meta has $30 billion in special purpose vehicles for data centers that don't show up as

🦔US Strategic Command is integrating AI into the nuclear command-and-control system to "enable and accelerate human decision-making." Officials insist humans will remain in control of launch decisions, but experts warn that as humans rely more on AI for data and recommendations

🦔More than half of the S&P 500's daily options volume now comes from zero-day-to-expiry contracts that barely existed five years ago. Assets in leveraged ETFs soared sixfold since the pandemic to $240 billion. An academic paper estimated 0DTE losses for retail traders total

🦔The S&P 500 rose 1.2% on Friday with over 450 stocks higher, ending a volatile week that tested investors' nerves. Fed Bank of New York President John Williams said he sees room to ease policy again in the near term, pushing odds of a December rate cut to around 60%. Bitcoin is

🦔America's middle class is exhausted. Costs for goods and services are 25% above 2020 levels, and families earning $66,666 to $200,000 are hunting for bargains and spending more carefully. The University of Michigan found 44% of middle-income respondents said their financial

🦔Expanded Affordable Care Act subsidies that capped premiums at 8.5% of income are expiring, and 22 million Americans are facing extreme premium increases. A Colorado retiree saw his monthly premium jump from $350 to $900. A Rhode Island constituent's premium is going from $600

🦔Bitcoin dropped as much as 7.6% to $80,553 on Friday, down about 25% in November for its worst monthly performance since June 2022. The total crypto market value fell below $3 trillion for the first time since April. Bitcoin has plummeted over 30% since hitting a record in

🦔US consumer sentiment dropped to 51 in November, one of the lowest levels on record, with views of personal finances at the dimmest since 2009. The current conditions gauge hit a record low of 51.1. The probability of personal job loss climbed to the highest since July 2020,

🦔OpenAI is committed to spending $1.4 trillion on data centers over the next decade while targeting a $1 trillion IPO valuation. The company accounts for two-thirds of unfulfilled contracts at Oracle and two-fifths at CoreWeave, with $375 billion in unfulfilled contracts with

🦔Major indexes dropped Thursday with margin debt hitting $1.18 trillion in October, up 45.2% over the past year while the S&P 500 rose approximately 19%. Borrowed money is growing more than twice as fast as the underlying market, a divergence that's appeared only before 1929,

🦔A widely-shared article (I'll link it below) argues AI taking jobs is "a blessing" and claims people only fear job loss because of trauma about survival, not because they actually like their jobs. The author says humans were "never meant to perform mindless tasks" and AI can't

🦔Tools for Humanity, the Sam Altman-founded company behind the iris-scanning Orb, told employees to work weekends and ignore anything outside their jobs. CEO Alex Blania said in January "if you should care about something else, and if you want something else, you should just not

🦔The delayed September jobs report showed the economy added 119,000 jobs versus expectations of 50,000, but unemployment ticked up to 4.4%, the highest since October 2021. August was revised down to a loss of 4,000 jobs. July was revised down by 7,000 to 72,000. The report

🦔The S&P 500 opened up 1.9% on Nvidia earnings, strong jobs data, and Walmart's positive update, then reversed to down 1.1% by 1 p.m., wiping out over $2 trillion in value. This marks the biggest intraday reversal since April's market chaos. The VIX rose above 28. Bitcoin

🦔The S&P 500 reversed a 1.9% morning rally to fall 0.7% by midday, wiping out gains as AI concerns resurfaced. Nvidia turned 1.4% lower after rallying earlier on earnings, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropping 2.7%. The VIX hovered near 27, above the 20 level that

🦔Blue Owl Capital scrapped a planned merger of two private credit funds after scrutiny over potential investor losses caused its stock to hit the lowest level since 2023. The smaller private fund saw redemption requests surge to $60 million in Q3, exceeding its preset limit, and

🦔A BlackRock private credit portfolio performed so poorly the firm waived management fees to avoid breaching collateralization tests, a rare move in the credit world. The BlackRock Baker CLO 2021-1 contains loans to troubled companies including Renovo Home Partners, which filed