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Today, in the CalculatedRisk Real Estate Newsletter: Question #10 for 2026: Will inventory increase further in 2026?

Excerpt:

Earlier I posted some questions on my blog for next year: Ten Economic Questions for 2026. Some of these questions concern real estate (inventory, house prices, housing starts, new home sales), and I’ll post thoughts on those in this newsletter (others like GDP and employment will be on my blog).

I'm adding some thoughts, and maybe some predictions for each question.

Here is a review of the Ten Economic Questions for 2025.

10) Housing Inventory: Housing inventory decreased sharply during the pandemic to record lows in early 2022. Since then, inventory has increased but is still below pre-pandemic levels. Will inventory increase further in 2026?

First, a brief history. Here are a few times when watching existing home inventory helped my analysis.

Starting in January 2005, I was very bearish on housing, but I wasn’t sure when the market would turn. Speculative bubbles can go on and on. However, the increase in existing home inventory in late 2005 (see red arrow on graph below) helped me call the top for house prices in 2006.

There is much more in the article.

Futures Rise, Japanese Yields Surge, Gold And Silver Soar

As we previewed late last week, the Santa Rally is back all right, and US equity futures are trading near session highs with the Nasdaq 100 poised to wipe out December’s losses as revived appetite for technology stocks powered gains across equity markets. As of 8:15am ET, S&P futures are 0.4% higher after the benchmark climbed 0.9% on Friday, the most in close to a month; Nasdaq futures rise 0.6% set to build on Friday’s jump as NVDA jumped 2% on a Reuters report the company sees H200 shipments to China starting by mid-February; Oracle and Micron both climbed more than 2% in premarket trading while most members of the Magnificent Seven megacaps advanced.Tech and mining shares outperformed in Europe. In Asia, benchmarks most exposed to artificial-intelligence demand, including South Korea’s Kospi, also led gains. Global bond markets remained under pressure, led by a second day of losses in Japanese debt following an interest-rate hike by the Bank of Japan. The dollar fell. Gold ($4400) silver ($69) and copper all climbed to record highs.The US economic calendar includes the Chicago Fed national activity index (8:30am). No Fed members scheduled to speak for the session

In premarket trading, Nvidia and Tesla lead gains among the Mag 7 tech stocks as sentiment toward AI-exposed companies improves following Micron Technology’s results last week. Nvidia has told Chinese clients it aims to ship its second-most powerful AI chips to China by mid-February, Reuters reports, citing people familiar with the matter. (NVDA +1.7%, TSLA +1.2%, GOOGL +0.5%, AMZN +0.4%, META +0.4%, MSFT +0.3%, AAPL is little changed).

• Gold and silver miners advance after prices of both precious metals hit record highs. Newmont (NEM) climbs 2% and Coeur Mining (CDE) rises 4%.
• Clearwater Analytics Holdings Inc. (CWAN) is up 8% as a group of private equity firms led by Permira and Warburg Pincus has agreed to acquire the investment and accounting software maker in a deal valuing it at $8.4 billion including debt.
• Honeywell (HON) slips 1% after the industrial conglomerate adjusted its full-year and fourth quarter 2025 guidance to reflect the reclassification of its Advanced Materials business — now Solstice Advanced Materials Inc. — as it discontinued operations following its spinoff on October 30.
• Marvell Technology (MRVL) rises 2% after Citi opened a positive catalyst watch on the chipmaker ahead of next month’s CES conference.
• Rocket Lab (RKLB) gains 4% after saying late Friday that it won a contract to design and build 18 satellites, the company’s largest single contract to date.
• T1 Energy (TE) climbs 7% after it signed a three-year contract to supply Treaty Oak Clean Energy with a minimum of 900MW of solar modules built with domestic solar cells from T1’s planned G2_Austin solar cell fab.

A year-end rally in stocks is taking hold, with investors positive about further gains in 2026, although volumes are set to be thinner in this holiday-shortened trading week. Sentiment has been bullish for three weeks in a row, according to Deutsche Bank strategists. Meanwhile, in commodities, oil rose as Trump intensified a blockade on Venezuela. Gold and silver soared to all-time highs on the escalating geopolitical tensions and bets on Fed rate cuts.

“It has been very remarkable how precious metals’ prices have decorrelated from other assets in recent months,” said Roberto Scholtes, head of strategy at Singular Bank. “Earlier this year, gold prices were materially correlated to the dollar and to high-beta risk assets such as tech stocks and cryptos. But this has been waning gradually, and nowadays they’re running freely.”

The focus on price moves in commodities went beyond record-setting metals, with oil climbing amid heightened geopolitical tensions after the US stepped up a blockade on Venezuela.

Bullishness toward stocks has pushed positioning higher, while fund managers are maintaining record low levels of cash, according to the latest BofA Fund Manager Survey. They are betting on a further rally next year, despite concerns in some quarters over rich valuations, heavy artificial intelligence capex and potentially over-optimistic earnings expectations. Separately, Goldman strategists say the economic outlook is supportive for small-cap stocks, a factor that’s underpriced by the market. The Russell 2000 is likely to advance 10% in 2026, close to the 12% return expected in the S&P 500, they say.

Optimism for a year-end rally in equities are growing after dip buyers late last week supported a rebound in US stocks. While some doubts about the AI trade and elevated valuations persist, optimism over the economy and corporate earnings is helping lift sentiment.

“Markets are riding a risk-on liquidity wave into year-end as resilient US growth underpins earnings next year, while a lower Fed fund rate eases financial conditions,” said Desmond Tjiang, chief investment officer for equities and multi-asset investment at BEA Union Investment. “Fears of AI capex and returns also recede on improving compute economics.”

Unlike the US, enthusiasm for European equities is missing on Monday as the Stoxx 600 slips 0.2% with utilities as well as food and beverage shares among the biggest laggards. Meanwhile, miners outperform as traders monitor the geopolitical outlook in Venezuela. Here are some of the biggest movers on Monday:

• Saipem shares rise as much as 4.3%, the most since July, after the Italian energy services and drilling specialist wins an offshore EPCI Contract Worth $3.1 Billion by QatarEnergy LNG.
• Fresnillo shares climb as much as 3% to a record high, leading a rally in mining stocks as gold, silver and copper prices hit record highs.
• Gruvaktiebolaget Viscaria shares rise as much as 17%, the most in more than a year, after Handelsbanken initiated coverage of the Swedish mining company’s stock with a buy rating, calling its growth potential attractive.
• Rank Group shares decline as much as 9.1%, hitting the lowest level since mid-May, after the gambling firm said its Spanish businesses, Enracha and Yo, were targeted by payment fraud totaling about €7.1 million.
• ASP Isotopes shares plunge as much as 50% in Johannesburg after Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman said it is investigating potential claims on behalf of purchasers.
• Fenerbahce shares fall as much as 3.5% in Istanbul to the lowest level since May after state-run Anadolu Agency reported the sports club’s chairman was questioned as part of an investigation into illegal drug use.
• Pantheon Resources shares drop as much as 58%, the most since April 2018, after pausing testing of the Dubhe-1 well, citing cost profile of winter operations and focus on “disciplined” capital allocation.

In rates, Japanese yields remain center stage, with the 10-year segment hitting its highest level since 1999. The yield is 6bps higher today, amid speculation the Bank of Japan may need to raise interest rates more aggressively. This has spilled into other global benchmarks, lifting US, UK and German yields by 1-2bps. US yields cheaper by 1bp to 2bp across the curve with 2s10s, 5s30s spreads steeper by 1.2bp and 1bp on the day. US 10-year yields trade around 4.165%, cheaper by 1.5bp vs. 

In Asia, stocks extended gains, as tech firms tracked their US peers higher in a holiday-shortened week. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index climbed as much as 1.1%, with TSMC and Samsung Electronics supporting the gauge higher. Tech-heavy benchmarks in Taiwan and South Korea led gains in the region with a more than 1.5% increase each. Japan and Hong Kong shares also advanced. Here Are the Most Notable Asian Movers

• Kokusai Electric and Tokyo Electron shares climbed after Morgan Stanley MUFG analysts raised ratings and price targets for the stocks on signs of a recovery in demand for front-end semiconductor equipment. Meanwhile, Nidec shares rose after news the Japanese electronic component company’s founder Shigenobu Nagamori is stepping down from his position as chairman of the board.
• Shriram Finance shares surge to a record after analysts saw Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group’s $4.4 billion investment improving prospects of a credit rating upgrade.
• Mixue Group shares surge as much as 13% in Hong Kong, the most since March 7, after the Chinese fresh tea maker opened its first store in the US.
• Moore Threads shares rise as much as 4.2% after the company unveiled a new generation of chips aimed at reducing dependence on Nvidia Corp.’s hardware.
• WiseTech shares drop as much as 4.7%, the most since Nov. 18, after Executive Chair Richard White’s investment vehicle RealWise entered into a collar derivative transaction.
• Seatrium shares gain after the offshore engineering company reached an agreement with Maersk Offshore Wind’s affiliate Phoenix II A/S to deliver a wind turbine installation vessel by Feb. 28.
• Kokusai Electric and Tokyo Electron shares climbed Monday after Morgan Stanley MUFG analysts raised ratings and price targets for the stocks on signs of a recovery in demand for front-end semiconductor equipment.
• Daikin shares rose as much as 2.7%, the most since Nov. 20, after SMBC Nikko Securities raised the Japanese air conditioner maker to outperform from neutral on expectations for demand recovery and capital efficiency improvement.
• Nidec shares climb as much as 7.3%, the most since Nov. 11, after news the Japanese electronic component company’s founder Shigenobu Nagamori is stepping down from his position as chairman of the board.

This week’s Treasury auctions kick-off at 1pm New York with $69 billion 2-year notes, followed by $70 billion 5-year notes and $44 billion 7-year notes Tuesday and Wednesday. Before today’s auction, the WI 2-year currently trades around 3.482% which is ~0.7bp richer than November’s sale

In FX, the upside in Japanese yields and officials’ jawboning has supported the yen versus the dollar. Bloomberg’s Dollar Index is down 0.2%, pressured also by the outperformance in AUD, NZD and GBP.

In commodities, as noted above, gold and silver sit at record highs, up 1.6% and 2.8% respectively. WTI crude oil futures are up 1.9% as the US pursues a third tanker in Venezuela. Bitcoin continues to rise, up 1.8%.

The US economic calendar includes September Chicago Fed national activity index (8:30am). No Fed members scheduled to speak for the session

Market Snapshot

• S&P 500 mini +0.4%
• Nasdaq 100 mini +0.6%
• Russell 2000 mini +0.4%
• Stoxx Europe 600 -0.2%
• DAX little changed
• CAC 40 -0.4%
• 10-year Treasury yield +2 basis points at 4.16%
• VIX +0.1 points at 15.05
• Bloomberg Dollar Index -0.2% at 1207.51
• euro +0.2% at $1.1737
• WTI crude +1.2% at $57.17/barrel

Top Overnight News

• U.S. Coast Guard Chasing Another Tanker Involved in Shipping Venezuela Oil: WSJ
• Russian General Is Killed After Car Bomb Explodes in Moscow: BBG
• Paramount Amends Bid for Warner Discovery With New Ellison Guarantee: WSJ
• Trump on Friday said he would call a meeting of insurance companies in the coming weeks to push them to cut prices and stay in the system.
• Trump on Friday announced deals with nine pharmaceutical companies to cut prices on most drugs sold through Medicaid and lower cash-pay prices, while committing to most-favoured-nation pricing for future drugs, according to Reuters. The companies also pledged more than USD 150bln in US manufacturing and R&D investment, agreed to remit some foreign revenues to offset US costs, and received relief from US tariffs in return.
• Charlie Kirk’s Empire Is Lining Up Behind a JD Vance Presidential Bid: WSJ
• Vanke Averts Default as Bondholders Approve Longer Grace Period: BBG
• Japan prepares to restart world's biggest nuclear plant, 15 years after Fukushima: RTRS
• CBS News Pulls ‘60 Minutes’ Segment; Correspondent Calls Decision Political: WSJ
• One of Elon Musk’s Old Enemies Joins the Race to Run GM: WSJ
• Syrians emptied Assad’s prisons. They’re filling up again, and abuse is rife: RTRS
• Toxic Fumes on Planes Blamed for Deaths of Pilots and Crew: WSJ
• The Warner Deal: Cinema owners fear that Netflix or Paramount acquiring Warner could reduce number of theatrical releases or speed time to streaming platforms: WSJ
• Trump names Louisiana governor as Greenland special envoy, prompting Danish alarm: RTRS

Central Banks

• ECB's Kazmir said that the ECB remains flexible and will be ready to step in if needed. He is concerned about the long term growth prospect of the Eurozone.
• Fed’s Hammack (2026 voter) said rates should be held steady into the spring after recent cuts, warning she was inflation-wary, noting November’s 2.7% CPI likely understated 12-month price growth due to data distortions, and suggesting the neutral interest rate was higher than commonly believed, the WSJ reported.
• Former BoJ member Sakurai said the first hike to 1.0% could come around June or July and that the BoJ likely sees the neutral rate sitting somewhere around 1.75%.
• Chinese Loan Prime Rate 5Y (Dec) 3.50% vs. Exp. 3.50% (Prev. 3.50%).
• Chinese Loan Prime Rate 1Y (Dec) 3.00% vs. Exp. 3.00% (Prev. 3.00%).

Trade/Tariffs

• China's Commerce Ministry is to impose levies of up to 42.2% on EU dairy products, effective 23rd December, following its anti-subsidy probe.
• New Zealand concludes free trade agreement with India; deal set to be signed in H1 2026. India and New Zealand are confident of doubling bilateral trade over the next five years.

A more detailed look at global markets courtesy of Newsquawk

APAC stocks kicked off the week with gains across the board as the region coat-tailed on the strength seen stateside. Tech outperformance continued across the region. ASX 200 edged higher as miners tracked gains in gold prices, with the yellow metal buoyed by a weekend packed with geopolitics Nikkei 225 was the clear outperformer as it topped 50.5k as the index cheered the post-BoJ JPY weakness on Friday alongside the global tech rally, whilst simultaneously overlooking the continuing rise in JGB yields. KOSPI was underpinned by its tech sector and following a month-to-date rise in exports. Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp conformed to the risk tone but with upside shallower than the above peers, with the PBoC LPR left unchanged as expected, whilst reports on Friday suggested US lawmakers urged the Pentagon to add DeepSeek and Xiaomi to the list of firms allegedly aiding the Chinese military.

Top Asian News

• Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Kihara said will not comment on the forex market; recently seeing one-sided, rapid moves; important for currencies to move in a stable manner reflecting fundamentals; will take appropriate action against excessive moves. Closely watching the impact of higher interest rates while cooperating with the BoJ.
• Japanese Top Currency Diplomat Mimura said he is recently seeing one-sided, rapid moves; will take appropriate action against excessive moves; concerned about forex moves.
• China Vanke (2202 HK) bondholders approve the decision on a vote for 30-day extension of CNY 2bln bond, however rejecting one-year extension for 15th Dec CNY 2bln bond, via Reuters sources.
• Goldman Sachs expect Chinese stocks to continue advancing in 2026, citing easing geopolitical tensions and as investors household savings begin flowing to equities as interest rates fall. Analyst Kinger Lau writes that "we expect the bull run to continue, but at a slower pace". Though the firm highlights some main risks to the upside, including; global recession, AI exuberance, US-China tensions and disinflation. Finally, analysts suggest that the macro / equity-market policies remain in effect which should shift the expected fair value of Chinese stocks upward.

European equities (STOXX 600 -0.2%) are trading lower/flat this morning, with price action fairly rangebound in light newsflow. European sectors are trading with a mostly negative bias. Basic Resources (+1.1%) leads on firmer metal prices, followed by Tech (+0.4%) on positive spillover from the strong Nasdaq close, and Energy (+0.3%) on higher crude amid ongoing geopolitical tensions between Russia-Ukraine and US-Venezuela. On the downside, Utilities (-0.9%), Optimised Personal Care (-0.9%) and Food Beverage and Tobacco (-0.9%) lag.

Top European News

• German Ifo survey finds that 26% of firms expect business to deteriorate in 2026, 59% expect no change, 15% forecast an improvement.

Geopolitics: Venezuela

• US Coast Guard officials over the weekend tracked two oil tankers in international waters close to Venezuela, marking three tankers within the past week. An official suggested that the tanker is subject to sanctions, according to several media reports.
• The Venezuelan government rejected the seizure of a new vessel transporting oil, it said in a statement.

Geopolitics: Ukraine

• US Special Envoy Witkoff said the Ukrainian delegation held productive meetings over three days in Florida with US and European partners, including a separate US–Ukraine meeting, with discussions focused on timelines and sequencing of next steps.
• Ukrainian President Zelensky said broader consultations with European partners should follow recent talks in the US.
• Ukrainian President Zelensky said allies had started to slow supplies of air defence missiles and said Kyiv should stand by the US as mediator on talks with Russia, commenting on French President Macron’s proposal.
• Ukrainian President Zelensky said the situation in the Odesa region was harsh after Russian strikes and said Russia was trying to restrict Ukraine’s access to the sea.
• The Kremlin said changes made by Ukrainians and Europeans to peace proposals did not bring agreements closer or add anything positive, IFAX reported. It said Dmitriev was still in Miami meeting with Americans and would report on the results upon his return to Moscow. Kremlin aide said a trilateral Russia–US–Ukraine meeting was not being discussed.
• Ukrainian President Zelensky said elections could not be held in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, could only take place once security was guaranteed, and said Kyiv was working with the US on a stable peace while preparing voting infrastructure for Ukrainians abroad, Reuters reported.
• Ukraine’s deputy prime minister said Russia attacked the Pivdennyi port and was deliberately targeting civilian logistics in the Odesa region.
• Russia’s Defence Ministry said Russian troops had captured Vysoke in Ukraine’s Sumy region and Svitlie in the Donetsk region, according to IFAX and TASS.
• Russia's Kremlin said Envoy Dmitriev will report to President Putin on the US proposals for a possible Ukraine settlement. Adds the US intelligence perception of Putin's aims are mistaken following the Reuters report.
• Russian General Sarvarov was injured in a car explosion in Moscow, via Unn; subsequently, the Russian Investigative Committee said the general was killed in the explosion.
• "TASS: [Russian President] Putin's envoy is likely to hold the next meeting with the US delegation in Moscow", via Al Arabiya.
• Two vessels and two piers were damaged in Russia’s Krasnodar after a Ukrainian drone attack, regional authorities said; damage to piers led to a large fire in the area.
• US Special Envoy Witkoff said weekend meetings between US and Russian delegation were productive and constructive; Russia remains fully committed to achieving peace in Ukraine.

Geopolitics: Middle East

• Israeli PM Netanyahu reportedly plans to brief US President Trump on possible new Iran strikes, according to NBC News. Israeli officials believe Iran is expanding its ballistic missile program. They are preparing to make the case during an upcoming meeting with Trump that it poses a new threat. Israeli officials have announced a Dec. 29 meeting.
• Sources said the biggest risk is a war between Israel and Iran will break as a result of a miscalculation with each side thinking the other plans to attack and try to preempt it, according to Axios.
• Israeli officials warned the Trump administration over the weekend that an Iranian IRGC missile exercise could be preparations for a strike on Israel, according to Axios sources.

US Event Calendar

• 8:30 a.m. ET: Chicago Fed Nat Activity Index

DB's Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap

For anyone still out there, we’re now entering a very quiet spell for markets before Christmas, with data releases and other headline announcements almost completely drying up. Indeed, there’s only two-and-a-half days left to go for many places, as the US and several European markets are closing early on Christmas Eve, and this week usually sees some of the lowest volumes of the year.

This morning, the main news has been further sharp losses for Japan’s government bonds, which follows the Bank of Japan’s Friday decision to hike rates by 25bps to 0.75%, the highest since 1995. The hike already meant that Japan’s 10yr yield was up +6.9bps last week to close above 2%, and this morning they’re up another +6.9bps to 2.08%, their highest since 1999. One factor behind that has been the weakness in the Japanese yen, which fell -1.40% against the US dollar on Friday, despite the hike. And this morning, the country’s chief currency official Atsushi Mimura said to reporters that “We’re seeing one-directional, sudden moves especially after last week’s monetary policy meeting, so I’m deeply concerned”. So in turn, that weakness for the yen is seen as raising the chance of another BoJ rate hike and has prompted the latest selloff for JGBs. We’ve seen that echoed across other countries too this morning, with 10yr Australian yields up +5.1bps this morning, whilst the 10yr Treasury yield is up +2.0bps to 4.17%.

For equities however, there’s been a much stronger picture across the board overnight, with gains for Japan’s Nikkei (+1.90%), along with the KOSPI (+1.82%), the CSI 300 (+0.79%), the Shanghai Comp (+0.64%) and the Hang Seng (+0.20%). Looking forward, US equity futures are also pointing higher, with those on the S&P 500 up +0.26%. Moreover, there’s been a fresh rally for precious metals this morning, with gold prices up +1.40% to $4400/oz, which would be an all-time closing high if sustained, and is the first time they’ve reached that level on an intraday basis as well. Similarly, silver prices (+3.25%) are up to a fresh record of $69.34/oz. So that now leaves their YTD gains at +68% for gold and +140% for silver, which would be the biggest for both since 1979, back when oil prices surged after the Iranian Revolution that year led to major supply disruption.

The latest rise in bond yields this morning follows several central bank decisions last week, where hawkish-leaning elements pushed yields higher around the world. So for example, the Bank of Japan did their 25bp rate hike as expected but also signalled more were still ahead and said real interest rates were “at significantly low levels”. Meanwhile in Europe, there was ongoing speculation about a potential ECB hike next year, particularly after they upgraded their forecasts for growth and core inflation. So that helped to push 10yr bund yields up +3.8bps last week to 2.89%, their highest level since the German fiscal stimulus announcements back in March.

However, the main exception to that pattern were US Treasuries, whose yields fell after the soft CPI print led investors to price in more rate cuts, with the 10yr yield down -3.7bps last week to 4.15%. That comes as speculation around the next Fed Chair has continued to swirl, and Trump said last week that it would be “someone who believes in lower interest rates”. We got some more headlines on the next Fed Chair last Friday as well, as CNBC reported that Fed Governor Waller had a “strong interview” with Trump, and that BlackRock’s Rick Rieder would be interviewed in the last week of the year. So as it stands the current odds on Polymarket are 56% for NEC Director Hassett, 22% for former Fed Governor Warsh, 12% for Governor Waller, and 6% for Rieder.

In terms of the week ahead, it’s a pretty quiet one on the events calendar. One thing to note will be a few US data releases, including the delayed Q3 GDP print today, but that’s very backward-looking and covers the period before the shutdown. Otherwise today, the more recent data will be the December consumer confidence reading from the Conference Board, which will be in the spotlight given the recent downtick in sentiment. In fact, the previous reading for November was the lowest since the Liberation Day turmoil in April. But apart from that, there really isn’t much scheduled.

With little on the calendar this week, this lack of events got us thinking about whether anything could disturb the pre-Christmas calm, as we have seen a few occasions when this week has brought heightened volatility. The best recent example is probably 2018, when you may remember a huge selloff saw the S&P 500 fall -7.7% in the four pre-Christmas sessions. A whole bunch of negative factors converged at once, including a hawkish Fed signalling more hikes to come, weak global data, US-China trade tensions, and the start of a US government shutdown on Dec 22. That selloff deepened further after the US Treasury Department said in a Dec 23 statement that Secretary Mnuchin had spoken with CEOs of the largest US banks, and that the President’s Working Group on financial markets would have a call. So that created huge concern that policymakers knew something that the rest of us didn’t, and the S&P hit its closing low on Christmas Eve.

Another good example, although not quite as fearful, happened in 2022. That was the year central banks hiked aggressively to combat inflation, with global bonds and equities entering a bear market that featured huge bouts of volatility as they kept sinking lower. And the Christmas run-up was no different, with the 10yr Treasury yield surging +26bps in the week before Christmas. That followed an adjustment to the Bank of Japan’s yield curve control policy on Dec 20, which was widely seen as the beginning of the end of Japan’s ultra-loose monetary policy. They permitted the 10yr JGB yield to rise to around 0.5%, up from 0.25% previously, but the effects cascaded globally given Japan’s role as one of the last anchors for low yields. So that led to some dramatic moves right before Christmas, and it was one of the biggest weekly jumps that year for the 10yr Treasury yield.

To be fair, this time last year saw a pre-Christmas Santa rally that took the S&P 500 up +2.9% in the final 3 days before Christmas. But either way, it shows that even if it’s a quiet week on the calendar, we can’t completely dismiss the prospect of a final year-end curveball, which would be in keeping with the constant surprises of 2025 so far. After all, this year has seen a huge regime shift in German fiscal policy in March, the Liberation Day tariffs in April, a direct military conflict between Israel and Iran in June, and the longest-ever US government shutdown over October-November. And that’s before we think about some other long-running themes, including periodic bond market flareups around fiscal policy, fears of a potential AI bubble, and ongoing concern around private credit.

Recapping last week’s moves now, global equities navigated several headwinds at the start of the week to recover into the weekend, with the S&P 500 ultimately closing up +0.10% for the week. Concerns over AI valuations had been an issue in the middle of the week, with Oracle struggling after the FT reported that Blue Owl Capital wouldn’t back a $10bn deal for Oracle’s data centre in Michigan. However, the soft US CPI report and a more positive earnings release from Micron helped things turn around into the weekend, and the Magnificent 7 ultimately posted a +1.48% gain for the week.

That US CPI report was critical because it kept open the prospect of further rate cuts from the Fed next year. Admittedly, there were questions about the data’s methodology given the government shutdown, but the print was still viewed as soft enough to make Fed rate cuts more likely. So the headline CPI rate was down to +2.7% year-on-year (vs. +3.1% expected), whilst core CPI hit its lowest since early 2021 at +2.6% (vs. +3.0% expected). Earlier in the week, we also had the delayed jobs report for November, which showed the unemployment rate ticking up to 4.6%, whilst it showed payrolls had fallen by -105k in October, before rebounding by +64k in November. So overall, that kept up the momentum behind further rate cuts, with 60bps of further cuts priced in by the December 2026 meeting at the close on Friday. In turn, US Treasuries rallied across the curve, with the 2yr yield (-3.9bps) down to 3.48%, whilst the 10yr yield (-3.7bps) fell to 4.15%. US credit spreads saw little movement however, with IG spreads widening +1bp last week, whilst HY spreads were unchanged.

In Europe, equities put in a stronger performance, with the STOXX 600 (+1.60%) closing at a new record. In part, they were supported by signs of progress on the Ukraine peace talks, and Brent crude (-1.06%) fell back to $60.47/bbl, whilst yields on Ukraine’s 10yr dollar bonds fell to their lowest since March. In the meantime, the ECB left their deposit rate at 2%, although some hawkish tones also saw yields on 10yr bunds (+3.8bps), OATs (+3.5bps) and BTPs (+3.7bps) move higher. Otherwise, the Bank of England delivered a 25bp cut, taking their policy rate down to 3.75%, albeit in a close 5-4 vote that saw the rest prefer to keep rates on hold. Meanwhile, Euro IG credit spreads were unchanged last week, whilst HY spreads were +1bp wider.

Tyler Durden Mon, 12/22/2025 - 08:30



 

The transcript from this week’s MiB: Masters in Business: Samantha McLemore, Patient Capital, is below.

You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.

~~~

This is Masters in Business with Barry Ritholtz

This week on the podcast, an extra special Masters in Business Live from the Phillips Collection in Washington DC I sit down with Samantha Macklemore of Patient Capital. She’s known as really the protege of Bill Miller, who she’s worked with for the past 20 years. First at Leg Mason, then at Miller Value she runs Patient Capital and then has taken over the Opportunity Equity Fund from Miller Value. Her firm now runs it. I thought the conversation was fascinating, and I think you will also, with no further ado, my live conversation with Patient Capitals Samantha Macklemore.

Barry Ritholtz: All right, let me look at my notes, which says, I’m the host of Masters in Business, a podcast that’s been on Bloomberg for the past 11 years. The first Bloomberg podcast. Now there are dozens, many, many award-winning podcasts. Forgot to button my shirt after they ran the backup mic. So let’s get that taken care of since we’re on tv. So most of you have some idea who I am. Sam, why don’t you tell people who you are?

Samantha Macklemore: My name is Samantha Macklemore, I’m the founder and CIO of Patient Capital Management. I started my career many, many years ago now, I dunno how it’s been so long as an analyst at Leg Mason working for Bill Miller, who was a, a very well known value manager.

Barry Ritholtz: So I want to talk a little bit about your time with Bill Miller, but before we get to that, let’s start in college. Magna cum laude from Washington and Lee originally chemistry, but eventually changes to accounting and business. What was the original career plan?

Samantha Macklemore: Well, I, I didn’t have so much a plan when I first decided to major in chemistry, I took chemistry in high school and thought I was really good at it. And then I got to, so I was like, I’ll major in this. I I like to be good at things. And I got to college and that first class I quickly realized I was not so good at it. You know, I, I’d never worked so hard for a B and so I was like, you know, and some of my friends were, you know, doing much better. So I was like, no, that’s not, we’re gonna have to reexamine this whole thing. So I wound up in the business school ’cause I was analytical and that was a much better fit.

Barry Ritholtz: Accounting and business, not necessarily finance and investing. When, when did that spark light?

Samantha Macklemore: Well, it was, they didn’t have a finance degree at the business school. So again, I was very good at accounting. It just came naturally. I don’t know what that says about my brain, but, and I got involved with the investment club. I’ve had some investing experience with my dad who tried to get me interested in markets in high school, you know, in the late nineties. It was a roaring tech bull market much like we’re seeing today, although I don’t think we’re peak bubble. And he bought Dell and I had some funds that were for college. So he had invested those and tried to get me engaged. So I’d had a little bit of experience in high school and then I joined the investment club and I just liked that a lot.

Barry Ritholtz: So how did you find your way over to Leg Masons? Was that your first job right outta college?

Samantha Macklemore: That was, and I like to say I won the job lottery because it was the fall of 2001. So now we were in the tech market crash. It wasn’t a great job market, fortunately, you know, there were a lot of investment banks recruiting from my alma mater. So my plan was to go there. I was ready to do the all-nighters in New York. And Bill, who also went to Washington, Lee happened to come back, you know, the fall of my senior year. He did some speaking. He met with the investment club and I got very lucky. I asked him if I could send him my resume and he said sure. So I sent him my resume and, and joined him as a junior, junior analyst right out of college.

Barry Ritholtz: I imagine Bill Miller comes to an investment club at his alma mater and every person is handing him a resume. Is that accurate or were people a little more circumspect?

Samantha Macklemore: No, you would think, I mean, if I have advice to young people, it’s like,

Barry Ritholtz: Give Bill Miller your resume.

Samantha Macklemore: Give anyone your resume. Go after it. Go for the job. Everyone said there’s no way you can get a job in investment management. And so I just think people thought, okay, this isn’t what, you know, I’ll go do banking, I’m not gonna try. So actually I think I was the only, the only one that sent in my resume. Resume. Really? Yeah, that’s a, the only one that asked to do that.

Barry Ritholtz: There’s a lesson in that. So you start as an analyst at Leg Mason. How long did you do that? When did you transition to a portfolio manager? I

Samantha Macklemore: Was an analyst for a few years. So I started in 2002 and became the assistant portfolio manager of the Opportunity Trust, which is the mutual fund that Bill and I worked on for many years together that I now run in 2008. In, in August of 2008. Right. Good Timing.

Barry Ritholtz: Yeah, right before the markets fell apart during the financial crisis,

Samantha Macklemore: The next month was all hell brokers. Yes. We’ll, we’ll talk about that in a bit. But you spend 20 years working pretty much shoulder to shoulder with Bill Miller. What was that like? What did you take away from that experience?

Barry Ritholtz: I mean, it was amazing. I, I can’t express how lucky I was. I was just so lucky. I, you know, I think it’s an apprenticeship business. So I really, my desk was always right beside bill’s and he liked to teach. And so I would go in his office, we would look at the Bloomberg and you know, look at stock charts and I got to attend a lot of meetings with great CEOs. Jeff Bezos spoke at our investment conference in 2003 the year after I joined. And I got to hear his speech and be in some meetings with him. And so I couldn’t have been luckier in terms of what I was exposed to and that learning opportunity.

Barry Ritholtz: It’s kind of interesting you work with a legendary value investor who is, doesn’t really fit the mold of a traditional value investor. How much of his philosophy did you make your own? How similar or different of you to the Bill Miller style of investing?

Samantha Macklemore: Well, we have a lot of similarities. I think that’s one of the reasons we hit it off. And you know, I, I would say at my core, I’m a contrarian value investor. I didn’t grow up with a lot of money. I had to make money go far. I looked at the markets, I like stuff that was down that was generating cash. Bill and I, you know, when I first applied, talked about Eastman Kodak, which ended up being one of our biggest mistakes, both of us. But we kind of bonded over that. And what was much more, you know, transformational to me was Bill’s view. And he was, he was criticized when I joined him as not a true value manager. ’cause he had invested in names like Amazon, you know, in the early two thousands. And people said you can’t possibly be a value manager if you’re investing in these very high multiple stocks.

And you know, Bill used to joke that he liked to hire people young so he could imprint them like the baby bird, that whatever the first thing it sees it, it thinks is its mother. So I was definitely imprinted, but when Bill made the point, listen, we don’t know what the best values in the market are today. ’cause it depends on the future and the future is unknowable so no one knows what they are. But we do know if we look back over long periods of time, what the best values are, ’cause we have hindsight bias and we can look back and say, well, what went up the most clearly that was the most, the best value. And if you look, it’s always names that can grow and compound value over long periods of time. And those types of companies, because their prospects are so promising, they don’t tend to trade at low multiples.

So he said, as a value manager, why would you have a process where you explicitly exclude what you know are the best values in the market? That doesn’t make sense. And I thought, well, yeah, that just doesn’t make sense. Now to a contrarian type investor, you know, it’s not easy to, ’cause it depends on a future that’s unknowable, it always does. And so where can you get that conviction that that can be challenging? But I think that had a, you know, certainly a big impact on me and it’s a core part of our process to look at a mix of different types of opportunities in the portfolio.

Barry Ritholtz: ] You used the word conviction a couple of times. Opportunity Equity has always been a high-conviction fund, somewhat idiosyncratic strategy. Tell us a little bit about the fund’s philosophy and what makes it so unique amongst, I don’t wanna say value funds, but funds that look at reasonable purchase prices for equities.

Samantha Macklemore: I think we are unconventional and we’ve always been unconventional. And Bill started the Opportunity Trust in 1999 at the peak of that tech bubble. And the idea was let’s create a fund with the maximum flexibility possible to go wherever it wants. And again, there’s lots of structures in the business that make that hard. ’cause style boxes don’t like that people allocators wanna put you in a box and so it hurts demand for your fund when you’re like, no, I’m just gonna go wherever the best values are. But the idea is, over time, that should allow you to earn better returns if, if executed properly. So I think the fund has migrated around over time. It has had a different mix of, you know, what we call attractively, valued compounders like Amazon and Alphabet, which we own more classic value names that everyone would recognize as value, like Citigroup or, and General Motors.

And then we, we like to look at companies early in their life ’cause they’re more likely to be misunderstood. There’s a wider range of potential future outcomes. And, you know, a lot of people don’t feel comfortable, especially in the value investing community, where I think it’s, it’s a more risk averse group who wanna see the value today there, what’s today’s value and what’s today’s price. And again, you know, growth people tend to look further out in the future, but we, we like to have a mix and I think that helps the fund do well in different environments.

Barry Ritholtz: And let me put a little flesh on those bones because this morning the first thing I did was, hey, let’s see how opportunity is done year to date. It has beaten its benchmark year to date, one year, three year, and since inception. So it’s not just like this is a theoretical stock-picking approach. It’s done better than average. Is that a fair way to describe it without getting you into trouble with the compliance department? Yeah, you’re

Samantha Macklemore: You’re gonna get me in trouble with compliance, but yet, well,

Barry Ritholtz: I said it, not you…

Samantha Macklemore: We, we have had a good track record, especially relative to value managers, which have recently, you know, struggled in a very, you know, growthy sort of market

Barry Ritholtz: Since, since the financial, so let, since you went there, since the financial crisis value has been a pretty ugly laggard compared to growth. We’ve been in a very strong era for growth, especially since the end of the pandemic. What sort of challenges does that create to someone that’s labeled a value manager?

Samantha Macklemore: Oh, well, I mean I think it creates a lot of value in terms of, some people say, oh, your value only wanna talk to you. So my colleagues here, she had a conversation the other day and they’re like, we just don’t have any demand for value. No one cares. We’re like, but we’ve done really well and we’re beating the market every year since Sam took over. And it’s like, it doesn’t matter. So I think it does, you know, my view is our, our primary job is to deliver for our clients. And so if we do that, everything else will work out. I’ve seen this in this business time and time again. If you deliver results, everything else will work itself out. And so, and I, I I strongly believe value will have its day in the sun again, but it might take a, an ugly market. So I’m not, I’m not hoping for that.

Barry Ritholtz:  I’ve always tried to figure out a way to more appropriately describe what you do, what Bill Miller does. Is it growth at a reasonable price? Is it value in growth? Like how do you sum it up in a elevator pitch?

Samantha Macklemore: Again, I think it’s value. ’cause if you look at every name in the portfolio, we think they’re all undervalued. But the value of any business is the present value of the future. Free cash flows and growth is a very, very important input into, you know, that calculation. And so, so we are valuing businesses, but I also think it’s important to have diversification between different types of names in the portfolio. And so, you know, I wouldn’t feel comfortable being fully invested in this market and all the griest stuff that has higher valuations. You know, I like having some cheaper names in there that are likely to perform well in a different sort of environment and there’s really attractive values in the value area that have just just been left for dead. So we’ll be patient waiting for the market to close those gaps.

Barry Ritholtz: Since patience was brought up, let’s talk about Patient Capital. What inspired you to launch the firm and tell us a little bit of the thinking behind the name.

Samantha Macklemore: I’ve always been pretty driven and I’ve always had entrepreneurial interests. And so when I became the co-manager with Bill on the Opportunity fund in 2014, I was also interested in developing my own independent track record. So BI Bill gave me some of his personal money to run independently and be the sole decision maker. So at the end of 2019, that had a, a really good track record. We didn’t have an institutional business at Miller Value Partners we had back in the day at Leg. But Bill was more optimizing for the kind of life he wanted to live. He didn’t wanna grow and build a business. So I said, Hey, let me go after this institutional business. And there was at least stated interest in women and minority led opportunities there. So I said, it looks like there might be interest in the marketplace for this. It was important to me to have, I think it’s a great profession for women. I think I’ve read a lot of research on the importance of role models in the industry. So, you know, that was, you know, part of my decision. So we decided to turn it into a private fund, like a hedge fund structure. And we did, we made the decision in 2019 and then we actually launched it in 2020 right. In COVID, which was not the best time to..

Barry Ritholtz:  Not a good time to launch in new fund.

Samantha Macklemore: Whenever I make these big decisions, the market, you know, goes a little wonky. Right.

Barry Ritholtz: Since you’ve become the sole manager of the opportunity equity strategy, is it run the same way it was? How has it changed since Bill has retired from being co-manager that Yeah, so

Samantha Macklemore: The philosophy and process is exactly the same as what we’ve always done. And you know, the, the decision making is different ’cause it used to be a co-decision making structure. When I first became co-manager with Bill, he said, okay, great, you’re co-manager, but I’m not gonna let some 30 something year old tell me what to do on my fund. And I said, I got it. I gotta, you know, I have to convince you. And so over time, you know, it became more equal co and then I, I took it over, obviously when he stepped off at the end of 2022

00:15:05 [Speaker Changed] And Patient Capital has acquired this, it’s now a wholly owned subsidiary. Is that right

00:15:12 [Speaker Changed] Now Patient Capital is, you know, the, the Opportunity trust mutual fund business and the institutional business that I started under patient. And so the, all the team and the structure,

00:15:21 [Speaker Changed] How do they differ aside from a mutual fund has its own rules, regulations, and specific Well that’s

00:15:26 [Speaker Changed] The primary way again for me, I like to think one philosophy, one process, one team. And we’re just looking for the best ideas in the market. And then if it’s appropriate for the strategy, the mutual fund has more restrictions on what it can do, even though it has the widest latitude possible for a mutual fund. So, you know, we owned Bitcoin starting in 2020 in the private fund, but we couldn’t in the mutual fund. Now we own the Bitcoin ETFs, but it would be differences like that.

00:15:52 [Speaker Changed] Coming up we continue our conversation with Samantha Macklemore, chief investment Officer and founder of Patience Capital, talking about the state of the economy today. I’m Barry Ltz. You are listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. I am Barry Ritholtz, you’re listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Let’s return to my previously recorded conversation live at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC with patient capitals, Samantha Macklemore. So that one doesn’t think of Bitcoin as a value trade. Tell us what your thinking was there.

00:16:49 [Speaker Changed] Yeah, well my thinking was, I really screwed that one up because Bill got involved in Bitcoin when it was a couple hundred dollars a coin. And I was like, oh, this is another one of those things that’s gonna go to zero. ’cause Bill said, you know, it could go to zero or, but if it goes up, it’s gonna go up a lot. And I was like, I don’t need another thing going to zero. Big, big, big mistake. But, you know, then it had its run, it made it almost to 20,000 in 2018. You know, I again was telling Bill, when it got to 3000 bill, you should, he had a fund. And I was like, it was a huge position. I was like, you should cut it back. You know, this is, you know, has some risk. And it went to 20 and then it did crash, but back to 3000.

00:17:28 So that was another good lesson. But by 2020 again, I thought that there was, you know, potential inflation risk given all the, you know, monetary and fiscal stimulus. And by that time, you know, bill was on the phone every day with institutions and in, and you know, big in individuals that wanted to get up to speed. And there was a bull case early on about it being digital gold. But I thought it was very unlikely because there’s one gold and it has a special psychological space in the investment universe. But by 2020 I thought it was much more likely and it was developing along the path. And usually after you have these crashes, things don’t keep coming back. And so, so I bought it in the fund there on the belief that it was digital gold, which I could actually analyze. And you can look at the market cap of gold and look at, you know, the younger generations are much more inclined to digital assets. So if this is a proxy for the long-term potential here, what’s the upside? And if you do that math today, you know, Bitcoin could be worth 1.3, $1.4 million a share or a coin sometime in the future. And so again, I I still believe that to be the case.

00:18:35 [Speaker Changed] Hmm. I would would not have guessed that that’s a fairly contrarian perspective for a, a so-called value investor. Let, let’s talk about some other fairly contrarian approaches. You were an aspiring innkeeper in Vermont. I I have to ask about that ’cause it’s just so off what I, I know of you Tell us about adventures in inn keeping. Well

00:19:02 [Speaker Changed] I was an innkeeper, I’m not the actual innkeeper, but yes, I like to learn lessons the hard way. That’s, you know, part of my unfortunate law in life and you know, so 2011 we’d gone through the financial crisis, you know, bill was this genius. We’d had a really poor performance. He spent all his time working. I just had my first daughter, which totally rearranged everything in my life and my priorities. And I was like, you know, do I wanna work that hard and do that? Or you know, now I have this daughter and she’s so important to me. So I was considering a whole bunch of things and you know, innkeeper was one of them, as crazy as that sounds ’cause it’s so not my thing. Like, but, and then it was the real estate obviously bubble and crash. And so, you know, I think I had mentioned this to my family, they live in Vermont.

00:19:53 My dad was like, oh the Vermont Inn is going up for auction. And I was like, oh this is very interesting. It’s a sign of our times. Let me go to this auction. So my husband and I went to the auction. You know, we, I did work on what I thought the end was worth before going into that. And you know, there was a first bid for the end and then we bid the second bid and then I’m like, what are you doing? That was crazy. Like don’t do that again. But that was it. It was over. There were no two bids, there were no more bids. And so, you know, we ended up with an inn that was closed down ’cause it had gone through foreclosure. Fortunately my family was all there. So then I made, I compounded the air by getting my brother-in-law and sister involved to run the inn. So got family involved in an absentee business and you know, we also were on a reality show. We won’t go into that. Did you, did

00:20:41 [Speaker Changed] You really

00:20:41 [Speaker Changed] Do a reality show? Yeah, we did a reality show. ’cause I’m not gonna tell you the name ’cause I don’t want you to go watch it, but I needed someone to help me figure out how I was gonna run this in. But we got it open. So the, the auction was in October. I wanted to get it open by the holidays ’cause that’s obviously the big ski season there, which we did

00:21:00 [Speaker Changed] December. You did? We

00:21:01 [Speaker Changed] Did that. Yeah. My dad, my husband’s dad, we got everyone involved in getting the in reopen and we had to figure out how to get people to come and it, so it was, it was not for me. I quickly figured that out. But you know, we kind of got the business running and then sold it. So,

00:21:17 [Speaker Changed] And and what was the lesson? We learned the lesson from don’t scratch your nose at auctions. Yeah,

00:21:22 [Speaker Changed] The lesson was, I like markets. I can sit at my desk and make a lot of money doing very little versus managing a chef who has, you know, a lot of issues on when I tell him the food’s not so good and he thinks he’s an artist and you know, I was like, this is not for me. And the, the maximum amount you could make on it and like that was not that much. So

00:21:42 [Speaker Changed] Not a lot of bad business model.

00:21:44 [Speaker Changed] We, we did make some money so it was okay. But it was a lot of work for, you know, how much you could make. Yes.

00:21:49 [Speaker Changed] And you were working full-time?

00:21:52 [Speaker Changed] I was working, yeah. I was working full-time so you know, I wasn’t on site again. I had people there working

00:21:59 [Speaker Changed] That. That’s an amazing story. Let, let’s talk a little bit about philosophy. You have talked about Buddhism and stoicism as related to finance and investing. Tell us a little bit about that.

00:22:12 [Speaker Changed] Yeah, well I think in investing in Mark and markets, having the right mindset is probably the most important thing. And you know, it’s a mixture of art and science and a lot of people think the scientific part is more important. But I think the art part is more important because, you know, there’s a lot of data on how much more you can make in equity markets over time. And so the reason that you can make more is ’cause you have these periodic losses and it, you know, I liken it to dieting. It’s like people don’t fail at dieting ’cause they don’t know they shouldn’t eat the cookie. Right? Like, you know, you shouldn’t eat the cookie. It’s because it’s too tempting and people know you shouldn’t sell when the markets are down mostly. But it’s hard to do that ’cause you feel like your, you know, your wealth is at risk.

00:23:00 And so I think having tools that help you have the right structure for how you think about things and how you behave are really important. I mean some people are naturally wired that way and different people, you know, have different abilities. But I think having certain tools and mindsets can help anyone be better. And so, you know, staying calm, understanding that there’s only certain things that are within your control and that’s what you can focus on. And then understanding that there will be times when you lose money but over time, if again it’s so sensitive to time horizon, if you have a long time horizon and you can put your money away for a long time, there’s almost nothing safer If you have a 20 or 25 year time horizon, you know, equities have never been down over that time. The US period. Yeah. US equities. Yes. And so I meditate regularly and you know, I keep a journal and I remember during the COVID pandemic, you know, we were all locked away, but I was emailing with Bill and he was reading stoicism and that kind of got me interested and we were, you know, he was sharing quotes. And so I think it can really help you in the moment to make better decisions if you have these tools

00:24:10 [Speaker Changed] Re recognizing what is and is not within your control and a sense of calm, it turns out to be useful in markets. Yeah,

00:24:17 [Speaker Changed] Imagine that. Who,

00:24:19 [Speaker Changed] Who? Whoever would’ve guessed that. And yet most people don’t reach that conclusion. They, they go the other direction. Yes. So, so let’s talk a little bit about where we are in the state of the market today. I’m watching real time transcription, which five years ago would’ve been magic. Mm. There’s been dictation software for decades. It’s always been pretty terrible. It’s amazing how good this is in real time. So let’s talk a little bit about artificial intelligence. What are your thoughts? How does this affect how you’re looking at overall markets and how you’re looking at individual companies?

00:24:58 [Speaker Changed] Yeah, well I think it’s, you know, anyone who knows anything about technology, I have not heard anyone who’s knowledgeable about this space. Not say that it’s completely transformational. And you know, more important, you know, I, I think you know the Capital one CEO, you know, he claims to have the first FinTech at Capital One ’cause they were very into data, but he said it’s bigger than the agricultural revolution, the, you know, invention of fire, the industrial revolution, the digital revolution. And I haven’t really heard anyone dispute that. So there’s lots of questions about how long does it take, what exactly does it do? Are companies overvalued now? But I think, you know, a anyone who knows anything believes that the impact of this is just going to be huge. And so when you’re in that sort of situation in the markets, you obviously need to be aware and try to learn, you know, everything you can.

00:25:51 I think we bought Nvidia in January of 2024. The interesting thing about this is I love markets ’cause they’re so interesting but in they’re complex adaptive systems which make them very, very difficult to outperform. They’re extremely difficult but they adapt. And so what’s interesting to me is that we have this AI bubble, you know, hysteria basically where everyone, it’s all you read all the time. And that makes sense given that we’ve had, you know, the tech bubble, we had the housing bubble, we’ve had some of these bubbles. But I think, and it’s possible that, you know, there will be something negative here, but you’re not seeing valuations at all in line with what we saw in the tech bubble. And the companies that are spending these enormous amounts of money, which they are very large sums of money, they’re basically the best companies that ever existed in the history of the world.

00:26:45 If you look at their returns on capital, their free cash flow margin, you know, their revenue growth rates. And so, so I like that there’s all this AI bubble talk because it keeps a lid on the valuations. I think it actually makes it more sustainable. Not that they’re, you know, I would have concern in some of the companies like OpenAI which you know, had under 4 billion in revenues last year and has committed to $1.4 trillion in spend. So we’re watching that very closely. And I think for me, I have children and I’m thinking what does this mean for the future of employment and is, you know, what can I advise them to go into? Which I think that’s a much tougher question now

00:27:23 [Speaker Changed] Then. So, so I’m glad you went over there ’cause I wanted to ask, you’ve talked about the value of mentorship, about training young people, whether analysts or fund managers, what have you. If you look at the unemployment rate today at 4 3 4 4 and then you look at the college graduate under 30 unemployment, it’s more than double that it’s in the nines. What does AI do for that demographic learning to being mentored, learning a trade, being able to get a job at an entry level when their competition seems to be software?

00:28:02 [Speaker Changed] Yeah, I mean it’s a great question. I’m not sure I have the answer to that. I mean, what we know is you can look at industries adopting AI and those that haven’t and there’s clearly an impact on junior hires. So it is having an impact. And you know, Dario Amede, the CEO of Anthropic has said he believes that the white collar unemployment rate will be, you know, five to 25% in one to five years. So huge impact. And so I think it, you know, that’s why I’m thinking like what do you advise young people to do? I think I asked people at my, you know, college that I went to where I’m on the board, the professors there, they’re trying, you know, they’ve worked hard to set up an AI program and help students be literate and you know, well-versed in this. I think if you can use it as a tool to your advantage, you still need humans to do this work. And so, you know, being capable in that is really important. You know, I was at a Santa Fe Institute meeting a couple weeks ago, you know, that was on AI and they talked about how what the models aren’t good at, which I thought was really interesting is complex problem solving and creativity. So those seem more unique human endeavors. So leaning into areas where, you know, those are critical skills I think are important, but areas like law or you know, obviously customer service coding, some of these areas are getting quite disrupted.

00:29:30 [Speaker Changed] And you’re saying complex problem solving and creativity AI is not great at still,

00:29:35 [Speaker Changed] Still these models cannot do it. Now will they get there? I don’t know. But I think what’s useful is to have a human who is well versed and can think critically about, ’cause these models hallucinate, they’ll make up lies. They’ll tell you incorrect information, they’re getting better at that. But having someone who knows how to check facts, use different models in different situations, you know, that’s gonna be very valuable. I think who can figure stuff out that you haven’t been taught go and solve real problems in the real world, I think is also valuable.

00:30:06 [Speaker Changed] So every time we see a back test that’s based on historical data, it always looks great and built into the back test of the assumption the future is gonna look like the past. How much of what we’re seeing in artificial intelligence is sort of paralleling that, hey, we’re working off the corpus of all these documents that have been previously written. If you wanna do something that’s not gonna get replaced by ai, you have to go in a different direction.

00:30:33 [Speaker Changed] Yeah, no, I think that’s a great point. I mean, what the models do is they look at all of the information that’s out there and they can, you know, do things with it instantaneously. And so I think there’s a belief in the technology community that they will eventually have a breakthrough where they can have novel ideas. I, you know, that’s unclear if and when that’ll happen. I, you know, it hasn’t happened yet. And so, you know, if you can do that, if you can use ideas in an innovative way, if you can, certainly, I think in the investment business for long-term investors, what you’ve seen is machine learning and LA large language models have already been used to optimize short-term trading models. And again, we don’t compete there ’cause I think it’s extremely difficult, you know, to compete. But I think long-term, you know, those models have not been used to think about long-term investments at, you know, we talk about time arbitrage and patience and you know, what do we think the world’s gonna look like in 5, 10, 15 years? The future is uncertain, no one knows. So I don’t see how the models are gonna, you know, get an edge there. I mean, if they become smarter than all humans at some point maybe, but it’ll, it’ll be one of the last things hopefully.

00:31:51 [Speaker Changed] So, so are you using AI in your firm and, and if so, how?

00:31:56 [Speaker Changed] We are and we talk about AI all the time and so I, you know, tell the employees all the time like, you have to be all over this and learn how to use these models because you know they’re gonna displace you if you know, not you specifically, but all of us if we don’t. And so, you know, it’s still so early. So I think a lot of what’s going on now is more experimentation both at big companies and small companies. There was an article in the journal yesterday about how small businesses have had, you know, have been transformed by this ’cause they can do so many things. Like I used one to create a profit sharing plan and I just went back and forth with chat GBT like no, I don’t want this, no I want that. Like what is this model? And it like created it for me, you know, know with the back and forth.

00:32:39 And I sent it to the lawyers and it was good to go. I mean it was good. It needed no changes. And so I’d been, you know, I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time and the team was busy with all sorts of stuff so I finally just did it and it probably took me like an hour to do that. But we try it, we try tools on the investment side, you know, that are both specialized and more generalized. I use chat GPT all the time for, you know, everything in terms of doing research and you know, it’s really, you know, quite amazing. And we have, you know, we have a new tech person that we hired who has played around with automating and using agents to do certain tasks that people did. So I do think it is gonna, you know, replace some work now. I don’t think we’ll have less jobs. People will just be able to do, you know, more higher level work.

00:33:26 [Speaker Changed] Make makes sense. You, you earlier compared this to the dot coms, what are the parallels that are a fair comparison to the late nineties tech and telecom bubble and what do you think is really separating this era from the late 1990s?

00:33:44 [Speaker Changed] Well, I think the clearest, you know, parallel is the market valuation overall is at high levels that we haven’t seen since then. So I think the market’s at 22 times, you know, the next 12 months earnings and it peaked at like 25 times then. So we’re, you know, after the financial crisis we were at very low levels and we’ve spent, you know, the past 16 years, you know, having great markets, some of the best markets we’ve ever had and the valuations have risen. So I, you know, again, as value managers, that makes us, you know, on alert for signs that things might be going awry. But there’s many more, I think more significant differences. So during that there was, you know, I think technology hit 50 times earnings as a sector and a lot of the technology companies were losing a ton of money and there was a lot of, you know, debt financing.

00:34:36 So there’s a lot of unsustainable things, the build out of, you know, the fiber networks they were building for future demand that wasn’t yet there. So that’s very different than today we have this, you know, big infrastructure build out, but you know, there’s still shortages of demand. They can’t meet the demand that already exists. That’s a very different situation. And the companies that are building them, you know, building this infrastructure out for the most part are, you know, extremely, the hyperscalers are extremely well capitalized with great balance sheets, high free cash flow margins. So you know, the risks that sort of risk doesn’t exist. And also at the end of the tech bubble, everyone was piled into, you know, bill recognized the peak and actually got out of those names. And what made him recognize it was that, you know, I think in the first quarter of 2000, you know, the, a very high percent, like 75% of money managers outperformed and only two sectors outperformed tech and telecom.

00:35:34 And so everyone was piled into a, a very narrow area of the market that is not at all, you know, what you’re seeing now. And so I just now, you know, I think the, the bear case would be that for some reason, you know, the demand doesn’t exist and you know, the, the spend rolls over again. I still think it would be a much more modest, you know, pullback be just because of those underlying, you know, fundamental business factors. There are are other areas of the market like quantum computing and nuclear fission that are much more speculative that have already pulled back 50% actually just in this decline. So that also is a good thing. I think it keeps the market healthier longer.

00:36:16 [Speaker Changed] So you don’t explicitly talk about economic cycles, but every now and then I hear you drifting over to unemployment and growth and infrastructure and economist type speaks. How often do you use what’s going on in the broader economy as part of your process? Do you think about that? Are economic cycles significant to your process or is the economy gonna do what it’s gonna do and it doesn’t interfere with your approach? Well we

00:36:47 [Speaker Changed] Definitely try to understand what’s going on in the economy because it can have, you know, big impacts on, you know, investments. You know, there’s a lot of, no one can forecast the economy. You know, there’s a lot of good evidence that no one does that, economists don’t do it, investors don’t do it. So it’s a futile effort. Some, a lot of people claim that they have some view about the future, forecast the world, but

00:37:08 [Speaker Changed] What do we see in a recession forecast by exactly every year for the past three or four years? They’ll get it right eventually, right?

00:37:16 [Speaker Changed] And so, you know, the best strategy is just, you know, if you have a long time horizon to stay invested, but we wanna be aware of risks and the impact. I mean, our whole process is analyzing the fundamentals of businesses and looking at what the intrinsic value looks like and that’s a distribution of outcomes. ’cause the future’s uncertain. So we’re doing different scenarios and then we compare it to market expectations. And so we like a clear gap in those two things and we like, you know, better risk rewards, but we, there’s a lot that goes into both, both of those things. You know, sentiment goes into the market, expectations, you know, where people are positioned and you know, obviously the economic cycle for certain businesses has a big impact. It’s very sensitive to your time horizon, you know, just how much it matters and the longer your time horizon, the less it matters.

00:38:05 [Speaker Changed] Coming up we continue our conversation with Samantha Macklemore, chief investment officer and founder of Patience Capital, talking about the state of the economy today. I’m Barry Ritholtz, you’re listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. I am Barry Ritholtz, you’re listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Let’s return to my previously recorded conversation live at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC with patient capitals Samantha Macklemore. So you mentioned sentiment, I’m trying to remember a moment in history where collectively the investor class, the pundit class, the media all in real time identified a major market bubble at once. Is it, is it just too glib to say, Hey, everybody’s forecasting a bubble, therefore it can’t be a bubble?

00:39:13 [Speaker Changed] Well I’m a contrarian. So, you know, like that that kind of, you know, thinking appeals to me. I think it is true that usually what, you know, Howard Marks wrote a great memo on the whole tech space at in January and you know, I thought the most important line in that was, you know, a bubble is characterized by psychological extremists and so it is that psychological state. So we’re not, when everyone’s bemoaning a bubble and fearing a bubble and claiming a bubble that makes a bubble much less likely. ’cause people are then not positioned in it. And usually we’re the biggest risks are, are not where you’re focused on. If you know there’s a risk in a certain area, you treat it much differently, you manage it much differently. If everyone’s doing that, you know, Nvidia, you know, so, so the risk would be NVIDIA’s earnings are unsustainable and they’ve had this huge run up and they’re, they’ve captured so far about 90% of the economic profits in ai.

00:40:09 Again, I they’re gonna report tomorrow night if I were a betting man, which I’m not, I’m an investing woman, but you know, I would say they’re gonna beat and then the market might really like that ’cause it’s coming into it, you know, oversold. But I think the risk is there’s something happens to earnings, you know, and, and they have an earning cycle. Again, I don’t see that in the near term, but there’s no, you know, valuation, you know, excesses are just not there. Like these companies, if you look at NVIDIA’s growing, you know, 40 plus percent this year, trading at 28 times next year’s earnings, that is not a bubble at, you know, that’s not bubble valuations at all. It’s not what we saw in the tech bubble. So again, I think it is true that when everyone’s worried about a bubble, it’s likely not a bubble.

00:40:56 [Speaker Changed] So people have been talking about a KS shaped economy that the upper arm is doing great, the lower arm is doing poorly, can you apply the same thing to valuations with the market? If you take the top 10 or 20 stocks, they seem to be much more richly valued than the rest of the whatever you want to use Wilshire 5,000 or s and p 500. How do you think about that bifurcation? Yeah,

00:41:20 [Speaker Changed] Well I think there are certain areas, you know, in the market like quality or like return on capital where those, again, if you have high quality, high return on capital, high free cash flow margins, those companies should be valued at, you know, overall a higher level. But we’ve seen very wide gaps there. So I think I, I have a huge respect for the market though. So because we’re, every day we’re doing the work on okay let’s, this company might be attractive, let’s do the work on that and see what the market’s pricing in and we’ll say what is the market telling us this business can do? And usually the market’s pretty good at like, okay, yeah, that’s the easiest case to make and the market will reflect that. So it’s more anomalous to find areas where that’s wrong. Especially, you know, the market’s had a huge move up.

00:42:05 So the more it moves up, the harder it is. But we’re still finding, you know, opportunities I think we added significantly to healthcare and small caps, you know, earlier this year and healthcare until recently was at a 50 year relative valuation low. And those are good businesses with good returns on capital. And so, you know, the market gets so hyper short-term focused, you know, so many people these days are focused on the next quarter and they wanna outperform every month and every quarter. So again, if you can look out longer, I think you, you do have opportunities, but the reason people don’t is ’cause you sometimes have more downside in the short term if you’re buying into, you know, weakness.

00:42:42 [Speaker Changed] So how do you think overall about valuation and future return expectations when generally the markets had a good run and valuations are, if not bilious, a little more rich than average?

00:42:57 [Speaker Changed] Yeah, I mean my view on valuations is that they’re at the high end of the historical range. So again, that makes me more alert, more cautious. I think if you look, you know, at the underlying fundamentals and just the returns on capital of businesses, the free cash flow margins, the balance sheets, higher valuations are justified, but markets go through these cycles of undervaluation to overvaluation and then back again. And so that’s just part of markets. You know, again, I, I don’t think we’re at, you know, levels that I’m extremely concerned. I still think there are, you know, attractive opportunities in markets, but where we can add ballast to the portfolio defensive areas like healthcare, again, I think that helps position the portfolio for a variety of different sorts of environments. And there’s still plenty of cheap area, you know, cheap, cheap names in the market.

00:43:48 [Speaker Changed] So I have three of my favorite questions I always ask guests, but before I get to that, I wanna throw a little bit of a curve ball at you. What do you think investors are not talking about when, when they’re not thinking about AI bubbles, what are they overlooking? What topics or ideas or strategies are they just not thinking about that perhaps they should be? Yeah,

00:44:12 [Speaker Changed] Well that’s a really hard one ’cause I think, you know, there’s so many investors out there thinking about so many things and now in today’s day and age with great podcasts like yours and Twitter and x and all the research online, you can get access to all of the thinking. So, you know, I’m not sure that there’s things, people aren’t thinking about that much. But I would say, you know, one of my biggest lessons from Bill was the big money are made in the big moves. And so you need to be looking for those and you need to, you know, hold those and, and actually holding them is even harder than looking for them. And so I think people focus. If you, if you have a long time horizon and you’re interested in growing your wealth, which is what we want to do, you know, that’s our number one objective is to make money.

00:44:59 You know, I never saw Bill get upset about a stock that went down or losing money on a certain stock. ’cause you know that, you know, in our business, you know, the best investors are wrong about half the time, like half the stocks go down and that’s just part of the business. So you get really comfortable with being wrong. I never saw him mad. I saw him mad when he identified a stock Qualcomm and an analyst said, no, this is really bad at investment, like, don’t buy it. And then it went up 10 times. ’cause he is like, you just don’t get the opportunity to make money. And most of those type of errors, when something’s not in your portfolio, you don’t see it, you don’t notice it’s not there, but it has a huge impact on, you know, your ability to grow wealth. So I, I think there’s not enough discussion about that.

00:45:42 And you know, if you look at endowment returns, I think for the last decade they’re like 6.8% on average. And so the, the US equity market’s up over 13%. So that’s a huge shortfall that if you do the math on like 30 years of 13 versus 6.8, it’s like you, you either you’re up seven times versus you’re up 30 plus times. I mean that compounding math is, it’s shocking actually, even to me who I’m in this business, I know patients, I’m all about compounding and I do the math and I’m like, oh my goodness, the amount of wealth left on the table.

00:46:18 [Speaker Changed] Alright, so let’s jump to our, our speed round and then afterwards we’ll open it up for questions from the audience. I always like to get book ideas from people. Tell us what you’re reading and what are some of your favorite books?

00:46:32 [Speaker Changed] Well, I’m not rea right now what I’m reading is 1929 by Andrew Ross. So that’s nothing new. Everyone’s reading that, but I think it’s, it’s in the

00:46:39 [Speaker Changed] Probably helpful with all the bubble talk.

00:46:41 [Speaker Changed] Well it’s, you know, you have to be aware and I think studying history is really important. You know, I think, have you read The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter? No, that’s a really good book. And you know, my kids get sick of me preaching, but it’s all about how, you know, we are in a society where, you know, we’re, it’s all about comfort and, and the benefits of, you know, he has this thing Maa where he goes into nature and does really physically challenging things that are challenging enough that he will, and it’s not his thing, it’s actually a Japanese thing, but that you are most likely to fail, but you, and make it challenging enough f just shy of like maybe dying. So again, I’m not a promo, I’m not a proponent of taking it to that level, but I am a proponent of, you know, if you listen to Jensen Wong at Nvidia and he talks about the value of pain and suffering. And he is like, he talks about being a CEO, he’s like, a lot of people wanna be a CEO. He’s like, but the experience is not power and glory. It’s pain and suffering and like the, all the hardest problems come to you. So I think, you know, exposing yourself to things out of your comfort zone where you have the opportunity to grow and have some pain, I, you know, I think that’s kind of what makes life interesting. And so that would be a book that I would

00:47:57 [Speaker Changed] Recommend. So final two questions. What sort of advice would you give to a recent college grad interested in a career in investing in finance?

00:48:06 [Speaker Changed] Well, I mean, back to my experience, I would say go for it and be persistent. I mean, we have a few job postings now, and so we’re trying to fill those postings and it’s amazing to me, you know, a lot of people will go on LinkedIn and they’ll blast out their resume to everywhere and that they’re putting very little time and little thought into that. And we actually have on our site, you have to email it, and we’re paying attention to who’s actually reading that instruction and emailing it. But very few people follow up. I think we had one candidate who followed up like three times. And it makes a huge difference. And it, you know, it demonstrates interest, it demonstrates, you know, you’re paying attention to it. So I would say in a, in a tough job environment, especially it’s, it’s easier than you think to distinguish yourself if you’re actually interested in something. You know, perseverance, taking the time to learn really what the firm is, the person you’re talking to, who they are, what they’re trying to accomplish with this. It’s amazing to me how little people actually spend doing that.

00:49:07 [Speaker Changed] Hmm. Good, good advice. And our final question, what do you know about the world of investing today would’ve been useful 25 years ago or so when you were first getting started?

00:49:18 [Speaker Changed] Yeah. By Nvidia, I know you told me I couldn’t do this by Amazon, by Bitcoin, apple. Don’t miss, you know, but if there’s a broader point, I mean, part of it is like, you know, again, this kind of will go full circle, but the power of patience and compounding, again, it’s like teach what you need to learn. But Bill used to tell me when I was young, because I’d be like, bill, you know, I need to make more money. I need to find more stocks. You need to gimme more responsibilities. And you’re like, calm down. Like be patient. I’m like, no, I can’t be patient. This is my friend who I graduated with, he’s at Goldman Sachs, he’s making like $10 million a year and he’s like, calm down. And you know, now 20 years, 25 years later, it is amazing just the power of compounding. If you find a name like Amazon or you know, and you invest, and again, you’re gonna have a couple, you know, number of big drawdowns in those, you know, stocks that go up a lot go down a lot. And that’s just part of the journey. But it’s so easy to underestimate, you know, just how powerful that can be.

00:50:15 [Speaker Changed] That was my live conversation with Samantha Macklemore, formerly of Leg Mason and Miller Value. Now with Patient Capital, I have to thank the crack team that helps put these conversations together, especially the live event. Alexis Noriega and Elizabeth Srin have been instrumental in making these sorts of things happen. Sean Russo is my researcher, Anna Luke is my producer. Sage Bauman is the head of podcasts at Bloomberg. I’m Barry Riol. You’ve been listening to a special live edition of Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.

 

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The post Transcript: Samantha McLemore, Patient Capital appeared first on The Big Picture.

Nvidia Prepares To Ship H200 AI Chips To China By Mid-February

Nvidia shares rose slightly in premarket trading in New York after Reuters reported that the US chipmaker has informed customers it plans to ship its second-most powerful AI chip, the H200, to China before the Lunar New Year in mid-February.

Sources familiar with the shipment say Nvidia plans to deliver about 5,000 to 10,000 chip modules, equivalent to 40,000 to 80,000 H200 AI chips, to China in the coming months.

Those same sources noted that the chipmaker plans to expand H200 production capacity in the new year, with orders for that capacity scheduled to open in the second quarter of 2026.

Designed by Nvidia, the H200 AI chips are manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company using its advanced 4-nanometer process. This is the same foundry that manufactures most of Nvidia's Hopper-generation GPUs.

Major Chinese tech firms, including Alibaba Group and ByteDance, are interested in the H200s for training large AI models. This chip offers about six times the performance of the H20.

However, the sources noted:

Significant uncertainty remains, as Beijing has yet to approve any H200 purchases and the timeline could shift depending on government decisions, the sources said.

"The whole ‌plan is contingent on government approval," the third source said. "Nothing is certain until we get the official go-ahead."

. . .

Chinese officials held emergency meetings earlier this month to discuss the matter ‍and are weighing whether to allow shipments, Reuters reported this month. One proposal would require each H200 purchase to be bundled with a set ratio of domestic chips, according to the report.

This report follows the Trump administration's approval of Nvidia's sale of H200s in China, but only on the condition of a 25% surcharge. The opportunity from the US Gov't will also be available to other chipmakers, such as Intel and AMD.

However, China's move to expand domestic production of advanced AI chips may be at odds with Western chipmakers trying to expand market share in the world's second-largest economy.

Tyler Durden Mon, 12/22/2025 - 08:20

Altos reports that active single-family inventory was down 2.3% week-over-week.  Inventory usually declines sharply during the holiday season.
The first graph shows the seasonal pattern for active single-family inventory since 2015.
Click on graph for larger image.

The red line is for 2025.  The black line is for 2019.  
Inventory was up 13.5% compared to the same week in 2024 (last week it was up 13.7%), and down 5.7% compared to the same week in 2019 (last week it was down 5.6%). 
Inventory started 2025 down 22% compared to 2019.  Inventory has closed most of that gap, however inventory will still be below 2019 levels at the end of 2025.
This second inventory graph is courtesy of Altos Research.
As of December 19th, inventory was at 758 thousand (7-day average), compared to 775 thousand the prior week.  
Mike Simonsen discusses this data and much more regularly on YouTube

'Rather Brilliantly Evil': Life In The Fast Lane With Robinhood Markets

Authored by Eric Salzman via Racket News, (emphasis ours)

By just about any metric it has been a blowout year for the retail brokerage company Robinhood Markets. The company’s stock (HOOD) price is up about 220% in 2025, revenues and account growth have shot higher, and founder Vlad Tenev has become a multi-billionaire.

Robinhood was founded in 2013 but really burst onto the scene in 2020, changing the face of the retail brokerage industry. After a near-death experience in 2021 with the infamous GameStop episode, the company has become a phoenix, rising from the ashes, turning itself into a casino that can fit in a young man’s pocket. On the Robinhood app you can buy and sell stocks, options, crypto and bet on Monday Night Football all at the same time!

Robinhood is a pusher in plain sight and dopamine is the drug it peddles. It rounds up retail, non-professional traders and matches them up with the best and fastest traders in the world and gets paid handsomely to do it. Tenev continually claims he’s democratizing investing, but his customers are, in effect, profitable lab rats. Their order flow is sold to professional trading firms and studied. They’re more like marks than investors.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported:

The chief executive of Robinhood took the stage at the online brokerage’s annual summit in Las Vegas this fall decked out in a race-car driver’s jumpsuit and customized Nikes.

Vlad Tenev told the hundreds of cheering traders in the audience that they had chosen “one of the most intense lifestyles out there.” He compared trading to driving a race car. “A finely tuned machine can make all the difference,” he said, “and that’s the role we feel Robinhood plays for our active investors.”

Vlad is right about one thing: trading for a living is definitely intense. I’ve done it professionally until I realized I really wasn’t good at it (most people aren’t) and went back to sales and strategy! A veteran trader, who was actually very good at it, said to me once, “If it were easy, Girl Scouts would be doing it.”

As far as Vlad taking the stage in race-car driver get-up and talking about a finely tuned machine making the difference, the analogy only works if the driver knows how to handle the damn car.

If you put 99.99% of us into a Formula One car, we’re going to run that thing into the first wall we see. Maybe the odds are a little better trading stocks, or options on stocks and the host of other high-octane wagers that Robinhood promotes and offers, but over the long term, not much better.

The Journal’s story includes that of a 35-year-old man who says he gets up at 6:30 a.m. every day to start trading zero-day options.

It’s a hobby he said he never would have picked up if not for how easy it is on Robinhood. “The thrill gets me going. If $500 can get me $50,000 or $60,000, let me just try.”

Good Lord.

I have to admit that I’ve looked at the meteoric growth of Robinhood with fascination and a sick sense of admiration for what Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt built.

I felt the same way when I watched “Narcos Mexico” and saw how Felix Gallardo built the first Mexican marijuana and cocaine cartel.

My admiration comes from the rather brilliantly evil way Tenev and Bhatt took their early experiences with high frequency trading (HFT), identified a new brokerage profit model that could offer a no-fee brokerage combined with a video game-like interface to serve up dopamine hits to a whole new generation of investors that the traditional brokerage houses either overlooked or didn’t know how to reach effectively.

A Ticket to Billions: Payment for Order Flow

Fee-less trading was Robinhood’s main draw when it started in 2013. You might ask yourself how Robinhood could have made money without the traditional fees a retail broker would charge per trade. To this day, most users of Robinhood don’t know the answer to this question.

From their experience with high frequency trading, the Robinhood boys learned that they didn’t have to send your order to the publicly visible New York Stock Exchange, but could sell customer orders to buy and sell stocks and options to the big and secretive HFT market makers, like Citadel, Dash, Wolverine, Susquahanna, Jane Street and Morgan Stanley, who will happily take the other side of your trade and quietly pay Robinhood for the privilege. This is called Payment for Order Flow (PFOF). You may have read or heard about this from Michael Lewis’ book, “Flashboys.” Before all the super geniuses of the planet went into Artificial Intelligence, they went to Wall Street or Chicago to build these super-fast trading algorithms that can transact in about 100 milliseconds, or faster than you can blink your eyes.

Without getting too into the weeds, when a Robinhood customer places an order to buy a stock, Robinhood can go to say, the New York Stock Exchange to fill the customer’s order or can route the order to one of the HFT market makers as long as it’s making the best effort to get the best execution (essentially, price) for the customer. The HFT market makers post where they will buy or sell a particular stock or option. The market maker profits from the difference.

Profit isn’t guaranteed but market makers typically make a penny or two per share on stock trades — and they are potentially making tens of millions of pennies per day. For options, the HFTs can make a much larger spread, anywhere from 10 cents to a few dollars. This is why HFT market makers like options! HFT market makers pay retail brokerages like Robinhood and Charles Schwab a certain amount per share of their retail orders to direct the orders to them, and as long as the retail customer is getting the National Best Bid and Offer (NBBO) at the moment of trade, all good, right? Maybe.

The SEC found that from 2015 to 2018, Robinhood was not disclosing to its retail clients how the company was making money off orders by selling their order flow. from the 2020 SEC press release.

“…Robinhood made misleading statements and omissions in customer communications, including in FAQ pages on its website, about its largest revenue source when describing how it made money – namely, payments from trading firms in exchange for Robinhood sending its customer orders to those firms for execution, also known as “payment for order flow.” As the SEC’s order finds, one of Robinhood’s selling points to customers was that trading was “commission free,” but due in large part to its unusually high payment for order flow rates, Robinhood customers’ orders were executed at prices that were inferior to other brokers’ prices. Despite this, according to the SEC’s order, Robinhood falsely claimed in a website FAQ between October 2018 and June 2019 that its execution quality matched or beat that of its competitors. The order finds that Robinhood provided inferior trade prices that in aggregate deprived customers of $34.1 million even after taking into account the savings from not paying a commission.

After that ethical speed bump, Robinhood really got down to business. The demographic Robinhood was going for suddenly had lots of time on its hands when Covid hit. The Robinhood app provided a fix as people went to work day-trading, especially trading options. When it comes to getting your dopamine on, trading options — especially those expiring in a week or two — can do the trick.

Leverage

Here is a simple example. Back in 2021 when stocks were on a huge bull run, especially the big technology stocks like Google, Robinhood traders used options to get leverage. Leverage means using a smaller amount of your own money to control a much larger position or exposure in the market — essentially amplifying both potential gains and losses.

In this case, one standard stock option contract gives you control over 100 shares of the underlying stock (without having to buy the shares outright). Therefore, the trader could buy 10 call option contracts for $1,200, betting that Google stock will go higher by more than about 5% in the next two weeks. That $1,200 controls exposure to 1,000 shares (10 contracts × 100 shares each), which is the leverage in action.

At the end of two weeks, if Google went up say, 7%, the options could roughly double in value (or more, depending on the details), letting the trader turn that $1,200 into a big profit. However, if Google only goes up 4% (or less than the break-even point), the options the trader paid $1,200 for expire and become worthless, and the entire $1,200 is lost.

From June 1, 2020 to December 31, 2021, (Source Bloomberg) Google went up 102% and the option bets paid off handsomely. Since this was the first time many Robinhood traders invested in options, they felt it was a license to steal! They had never really lost. However, in 2022 Google shares dropped 39% and option bets got creamed as newbie traders learned the downside of leverage. In 2021 Bloomberg News reported on Robinhood’s option activity.

New disclosures show the app’s monthly volume of options executed tripled last year, making the firm the second-most active among peers behind Charles Schwab Corp., a 50-year-old stalwart that just bought TD Ameritrade. Offering options is so lucrative that they accounted for two-thirds of Robinhood’s reported revenue from order flow, a significant source of income. A single contract can generate more money than handling 100 shares.

Using its app, clients can unlock Robinhood’s most advanced level of options strategies in minutes by tapping their details into a smartphone. They can then instantly start placing wagers on some of the most complex U.S. markets available to the investing public. Approval for similar access can take days at competitors such as Schwab and Morgan Stanley’s E*Trade.

Between 2020 and the 3rd Quarter of 2025, Robinhood has been paid billions by HFT firms for their option order flow. For example, in the 3rd quarter of 2025, HFT market makers paid Robinhood approximately $260 million.

Robinhood gets paid more than other retail brokers for its option order flow. Why?

As of September 2025 Robinhood was paid by HFT firms $0.53 per options contract. Their closest option flow competitor Schwab got $0.39 per contract. Why is Robinhood’s flow so much more valuable than Schwab’s? One theory that I subscribe to is that Robinhood’s main client base — young men — is aggressive risk takers and relatively predictable. As we learned in the “Meme Stock” craze of 2020-2021, this client base moves in herds. HFT algorithms study the trading patterns of this demographic and predict what the Robinhood customer is going to do before they do it and I would bet that Vlad and Baiju knew about this when they started the firm more than a decade ago.

The HFT firms are not guaranteed wins every time, and they are taking risk which means they are not necessarily doing anything wrong. Robinhood on the other hand, pushing option trading aggressively because they know their option order flow is the most valuable by a wide margin is, at best, sleazy.

Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported:

(Vlad) Tenev has come to realize that plugged-in, aggressive traders are actually key to his company’s success.

Robinhood offers a host of ordinary financial products, including retirement accounts and credit cards. It is the riskier products tailored to day traders that make the most money for the company. In the most recent quarter, customer trading generated more than half of Robinhood’s revenue, and 78% of that transaction-based revenue came from crypto and options trading.

Tenev said he directed his team to cater more to that group. “These are our most engaged customers that generate the lion’s share of our revenue,” he said in an interview. “We put our best people on active traders.”

This sort of reminds me of “The Wire” druglord Avon Barksdale

Crypto

Robinhood has continued to expand rapidly in crypto. The Block reported last week:

Robinhood wants to attract more advanced, high-volume crypto traders in both the U.S. and EU and is unveiling new features to do so, including lower fees and added leverage for altcoin futures, the company said Monday.

Hoping to woo sophisticated traders away from rival exchanges, the stock and crypto trading platform has in the U.S. expanded the number of available fee tiers from three to seven, “offering rates as low as 0.03% for high-volume traders,” Robinhood said in a statement. In the EU, users who want to trade perpetual futures will now have access to new trading pairs with eligible customers able to trade up to 7X leverage.

7x leverage on altcoins, what could possibly go wrong?

Zero Day Options

Also recently, Robinhood has piled into a fabulous product mentioned earlier, zero-day options. If there was ever a product where probably 99% of Robinhood customers should not be playing in, it is zero-day options or 0DTE (Zero Days to Expiration), especially with Michael Lewis’ “Flash Boys.”

The way the product works is, say the S&P 500 index starts the day at 6,800. The customer can buy an option that pays off if the S&P 500 goes up 1% by the end of the day or down 1% (greater than 6,868 or less than 6,732). This is called “buying volatility.” If the S&P moves more than 1% in either direction by the end of the day, the customer wins; if not customer loses. There are many iterations of this type of trade, the type of trade Flash Boys wrote the book on, and they are the ones Robinhood’s customers are trading against. Who do you think will win that one over time?

Robinhood is getting paid handsomely to serve up its customers to the sharks. I imagine there are lots of guys like the one the Wall Street Journal spoke to who put down a daily bet at the opening bell and stare at their phone or iPad until the 4 pm close instead of actually living a life.

Prediction Markets

Finally, there’s the prediction markets. Prediction markets have been around for a while. The biggest prediction exchange in the U.S. is Kalshi, which started up in 2021. Kalshi is pretty simple.

Take an event like the presidential election. The player thinks Trump will beat Harris and currently 53% of all betters think Trump will win. The player bets $0.53 on Trump, and if Trump wins the player gets $1.00 and has made $0.47. Conversely, the players that bet on Harris put up $0.47. Now you can pretty much bet on the outcome of anything with Kalshi, including most sporting events.

The genius of Kalshi is that it’s able to call its product an “event contract” regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Kalshi is now considered to be a regulated exchange. Not having its product classified as a wager, but instead a regulated financial product, means that it’s legal to sell to 18-year-olds in all 50 states. Online sports gambling sites like DraftKings at least require customers to be 21 years old.

Brilliant.

Naturally, this August, just in time for football season, Robinhood partnered with Kalshi to put prediction markets for the NFL and college football on Robinhood’s app. Then in late November, Robinhood partnered with Susquahanna (one of the HFT Flash Boys that buys Robinhood’s order flow) and bought an existing CFTC-regulated exchange, acquiring a designated contract market (DCM) and derivatives clearing organization (DCO), MIAXdx. Susquahanna will be the market maker. The whole shebang will be launched in 2026 and the best news is, those highly entertaining but idiotic Same Game Parlay NFL bets will be available.

Starting Tuesday, users are able to trade preset combinations of the outcome, totals and spreads of individual NFL games, and starting in early 2026, users will have the ability to create custom combos of up to 10 outcomes across NFL games. Those will have “a structural look or feel as a parlay,” JB Mackenzie, vice president and general manager of futures and international at Robinhood, told CNBC.

Even more, the company is allowing users to wager on the performances of individual NFL players in real time. For example, they can place prop bets on a certain player scoring a touchdown at any point during a game as well as the passing, receiving and rushing yards for a player.

Awesome, bro.

We have been in a bull market for stocks for three years now. At some point we are going to have a draw down, probably a big one. Unfortunately, these three years have drawn in hundreds of thousands of our kids to the Robinhood pocket-casino. I’d like to think something can be done before the bad event to at least stop Robinhood’s growth, but there’s really nothing that can or will be done. I’d like to see the prediction market on that.

You can also listen to Eric Salzman discuss Robinhood on his podcast, Monkey Business.

Tyler Durden Mon, 12/22/2025 - 08:05

Denmark Furious After Trump Names Special Envoy To Greenland

President Donald Trump announced late Sunday on Truth Social that he is appointing Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry to serve as the U.S. Special Envoy to Greenland. The move prompted Denmark's Foreign Minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, to summon the U.S. ambassador, saying the appointment suggests continued American interest in the resource-rich island.

"I am pleased to announce that I am appointing the GREAT Governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, as the United States Special Envoy to Greenland. Jeff understands how essential Greenland is to our national security and will strongly advance our country's interests for the safety, security, and survival of our allies, and indeed, the world. Congratulations, Jeff!" Trump wrote in the Truth Social post.

Following Landry's appointment, Rasmussen told Reuters in an emailed statement, "The appointment confirms the continued American interest in Greenland. However, we insist that everyone—including the U.S.—must show respect for the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark."

In a separate statement, Rasmussen told CBS News he was "deeply angered" by the appointment and warned Washington to respect Denmark's sovereignty.

This prompted Denmark to summon the U.S. ambassador. Danish officials also summoned the U.S. ambassador in August after a report that at least three people with connections to Trump carried out covert influence operations in Greenland.

I am happy to see the Trump Administration isn't giving up on acquiring Greenland. It should be one of the top goals for the Administration to require Greenland. I would tell NATO that we are done if a deal isn’t reached. There are a lot of reasons why we need to have Greenland. pic.twitter.com/se5dRz50hj

— The Calvin Coolidge Project (@TheCalvinCooli1) December 22, 2025

Trump's proposal to buy Greenland didn't come out of nowhere. The US has had a military presence in Greenland since World War II and became its military defender in 1951. Harry Truman offered to buy it for $100M in gold. And our bases there are still deterrents against Russia. pic.twitter.com/zLetEHvCzv

— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) January 23, 2025

Trump has repeatedly stated that the U.S. should have jurisdiction over Greenland, mainly for defense and mineral-rich deposits. The strategically located Arctic island fits into the broader theme of Western Hemisphere Defense.  

In March, Vice President JD Vance toured the U.S. Pituffik Space Base, met U.S. Space Force personnel on the island, and accused Denmark of underinvesting there.

According to a January opinion poll, a majority of Greenland's 57,000 people wanted to become independent from Denmark but did not want to join the U.S.

The continued American interest in Greenland underscores the strategic importance of the resource-rich island in the Arctic for hemispheric defense purposes.

Tyler Durden Mon, 12/22/2025 - 07:45

Pump Baby, Pump! EIA Thinks OPEC Can Produce Far More Than Anyone Expected

Authored by Julianne Geiger via OilPrice.com,

The U.S. Energy Information Administration quietly rewrote a key assumption about the global oil market this week: OPEC can produce more oil than previously thought.

In its December Short-Term Energy Outlook, the EIA updated how it defines and estimates OPEC crude oil production capacity. The result was a material upward revision.

The agency now estimates OPEC’s effective production capacity was higher by about 220,000 barrels per day in 2024, 370,000 bpd in 2025, and 310,000 bpd in 2026 compared with its earlier assessments.

The change didn’t come from new drilling or surprise barrels. It came from a rethink of what “capacity” actually means.

The EIA refined two concepts it uses to assess supply risk: maximum sustainable capacity and effective production capacity. Maximum sustainable capacity is the theoretical upper limit a producer could reach within a year if everything runs smoothly. Effective capacity is more practical — the amount of oil that could realistically be brought online within 90 days and sustained without damaging fields or infrastructure. That second number is what the EIA uses to judge how much oil is actually available to respond to market shocks.

By tightening those definitions and reassessing disruptions, the agency concluded that OPEC’s buffer is larger than previously assumed. Because actual OPEC production estimates were left mostly unchanged, the revisions flowed almost directly into higher estimates of spare capacity.

This spare capacity serves as the oil market’s shock absorber.

When it’s thin (or thought to be thin), prices react violently to wars, sanctions, hurricanes, or refinery outages. When it’s fat, geopolitical risk carries less pricing power. In its latest update, the EIA is effectively telling the market that supply is less fragile than many traders believed.

This complicates OPEC+ messaging.

The group has leaned heavily on the narrative of tight capacity to justify production discipline. The EIA’s recalculation doesn’t blow that argument up, but it does weaken it.

As the EIA tells it, the market may not be as close to the supply edge as it thought. And that’s not a bullish message.

Tyler Durden Mon, 12/22/2025 - 07:20

Beijing Condemns Trump's Gunboat Diplomacy After China-Bound Tanker Seizure

Beijing has condemned the U.S. interception of sanctioned crude tankers off the Venezuelan coast after a China-bound oil tanker was seized on Saturday. Beijing said Venezuela has the right to conduct trade with other countries.

Reuters cited China's foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian at a regular press briefing, who said the US seizure of another country's tanker was a serious violation of international law. Jian added that China opposes all "unilateral and illegal" sanctions.

On Saturday, the U.S. Coast Guard seized the Centuries, which was loaded with 1.8 million barrels of sanctioned Venezuelan crude and was flying under the false name "Crag." The tanker was bound for China.

China is the largest buyer of Venezuelan crude, but Venezuelan oil accounts for only about 4% of China's total crude imports.

Reuters reports that data this year show Venezuelan crude exports to China range from 400,000 to 580,000 barrels per day, depending on the period and shipping patterns.

A White House spokesperson told Reuters that the Centuries was a "falsely flagged vessel" and carried sanctioned oil that was part of Venezuela's shadow fleet.

So far, the US has seized two sanctioned tankers. The first, VLCC Skipper, earlier this month. Skipper is set to be unloaded in the coming days at the Galveston Offshore Lightering Area (GOLA). After Saturday's seizure, news hit late afternoon Sunday of US forces in pursuit of yet another tanker.

All of this fits within the Trump administration's gunboat diplomacy foreign policy strategy, which is designed to accelerate regime instability in Caracas while materially weakening Cuba; the core objective is to disrupt financial flows, sever funding channels, and allow second- and third-order effects to follow.

Tyler Durden Mon, 12/22/2025 - 06:55

Freedom Lovers Aren't 'Fascists'

Authored by J.B. Shurk via American Thinker,

There’s nothing ‘right-wing’ about defending the Bill of Rights.

Being called “right-wing” or “fascist” is detestable. The label implies a preference for dictatorship, authoritarianism, and government supremacy over personal freedom. The exact opposite is true. I would describe myself as a supporter of autarchism in the sense that we should rule ourselves and not be ruled by others.

As someone who believes strongly in individual liberty, self-reliance, and self-government, I distrust all repositories of power — whether such power resides in government, corporations, or social institutions. As Lord Acton advised: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In my estimation, nothing in this physical world can be trusted with power for very long. Regrettably, all forms of power eventually become abusive.

Nineteenth-century diplomat and political writer John O’Sullivan (the man who coined the phrase “manifest destiny” in 1845) helped to popularize a sentiment shared by other luminaries of his time such as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Mark Twain: “The best government is that which governs least.”

Government is Leviathan. It knows only how to grow its size and the number of its tentacles until it is capable of wrapping its predacious powers around everyone and everything.

Emissaries of Big Government globalism speak of government as a benevolent “friend” and “parent” whose job is to “protect” and “take care of” the people. But government is none of those things. Government is coercion. It is force, including the threat of lethal force. It robs people of their labor in the form of taxes. It presumes to know what is best for everyone. It insists on telling people how to use their property and how to live their lives. It intrudes into family households and inserts itself between parents and children. Whereas a friend will fight beside you and a parent will sacrifice everything for your well-being, governments start wars recklessly, sacrifice citizens callously, and ignore the pleas of those suffering.

The German Nazis, Italian fascists, Soviet communists, and Chinese Maoists were all Big Government socialists who justified murdering their citizens for the good of the government. Government is not a “friend” or a “parent.” It is a homicidal maniac that society tries to keep somewhat restrained lest it indulge its basest instinct: to kill everyone in its path.

Government does not “protect” people. It uses people to its advantage. Government does not “take care of” people. It bullies them, steals from them, and keeps them divided against each other. Anybody praising the “virtues” of Big Government is nothing more than a macabre salesman for institutional slavery, indemnified violence, and legalized theft.

Those of us who identify as liberty lovers and defenders of freedom harbor profound distrust of government. It is therefore galling when Big Government leftists, socialists, globalists, Marxists, and even outright communists (especially those exercising power as so-called “journalists” working for multinational corporate news organizations) call us “right-wing.”

What is “right-wing” about wanting government bureaucrats to just leave us the hell alone? I try to put myself in the small wingtips of someone such as CNN’s Brian Stelter. When I say, “I want government out of my life,” how does he hear, “Right-wing fascism is overtaking America”? Is Brian obtuse? Maliciously dishonest? Both?

I find it perplexing to hear Stelter, Jake Tapper, and their fellow ideological clones on cable news describe those of us who most ardently defend the Bill of Rights as somehow being threats to American freedom. Look around the universe of political writers today, and you will find that almost all of the staunchest advocates for free speech, freedom of religion, the right to bear arms, and protections from warrantless government searches and mass surveillance are Americans whom Stelter, Tapper, and their cohorts would describe as “right-wing.”

On the other hand, the very leftists and globalists whom CNN anchors adore are daily calling for mass censorship in the name of fighting “disinformation” and “hate speech.” Stelter has made an entire career out of playing a “truth-telling hall monitor” who believes he is empowered to tell social media companies what should be stricken from public debate. He has explicitly called for a “harm reduction model” of permissible speech by illogically claiming that “reducing a liar’s reach is not the same as censoring freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is different than freedom of reach.” He defends censorship in the name of “freedom” because he expects to be the corporate news umpire who gets to decide what is true or false.

Could there possibly be anything more authoritarian than CNN personalities claiming the authority to declare official truths?

Nonetheless, CNN ignores its own assaults on free speech and instead decries “right-wingers” who believe parents should have a say over whether elementary school libraries include books on “transgenderism,” abortion, sexual fetishes, and pornography. CNN’s talking heads even call those of us who oppose “drag queen story hour” for kindergartners “Christian nationalists” — as if trying to be a moral person, a faithful Christian, a protective parent, and a patriotic American were the hallmarks of “fascism.”

Effective communication between human beings is difficult even when people speak the same language, share the same culture, and enjoy similar beliefs. When politicians and “journalists” defame as “fascists” those of us who fight for expansive personal freedom and against government tyranny, they rob society of peaceful public discourse and light the fuse of future violence.

Those in the “journalism” business who use words to sell fear and provoke bloodshed know exactly what they’re doing. When you demonize your political enemies long enough, some eventually get murdered. Charlie Kirk wasn’t the first, and he will not be the last. After all, there is an entire army of fascist Antifa terrorists who hunt “right-wingers” for sport. Or is that too much truth for Stelter’s “harm reduction model” to permit me to say out loud?

Tyler Durden Mon, 12/22/2025 - 06:30

Cocoa Prices Face Worst Annual Collapse In Six Decades As Goldman Sees "Tailwinds" For Hershey

After nearly tripling last year and soaring to a record $13,000 a ton, cocoa futures are on track for their worst-ever annual decline, based on data going back more than six decades.

Cocoa futures in New York are set for a 50% decline if losses persist through the end of the year.

Prices are currently trading around $5,845 as of Friday's close, a stark difference from the $12,000 to $13,000 range in late 2024 and early 2025.

The cocoa surge sparked a price shock and crushed margins for major food companies that relied heavily on chocolate production. Those companies include Nestlé, Hershey, and many others.

In return, supermarket prices for chocolate rose, but now Wall Street analysts don't expect the latest declines to translate into cheaper candy until the second half of 2026.

"The prices that the chocolate industry is currently working with are very high and painful," said Jonathan Parkman, head of agricultural sales at commodities brokerage Marex Group in London, as quoted by Bloomberg. "It's going to take us quite a while to work through that."

Swiss-Belgian cocoa processor Barry Callebaut has noted that supply risks in West Africa, the world's top-growing region, persist due to underinvestment, climate stress, and disease. The processor said chocolate was "far too cheap for far too long."

Lambertz, one of Germany's oldest confectioners, has enough cocoa supplies to last through the midpoint of 2026, after securing them when prices were high, said owner Hermann Bühlbecker. "As far as I can remember, there has never been such a price explosion," he said.

To cope with the price shock, many brands have responded with shrinkflation and reformulation, such as lighter bars or reduced cocoa content. Companies like Mondelez have made significant adjustments to formulation.

Last week, Bonnie Herzog, managing director and senior consumer analyst at Goldman Sachs, highlighted easing pressures in the cocoa market that could produce "tailwinds" for candy and junk food companies:

Pockets of easing commodity pressure to aid earnings growth for some. While input cost inflation has meaningfully moderated for Staples at large over the past couple of years, certain pockets (e.g., cocoa, proteins) were still inflationary and weighed on earnings. As prices continue to come down meaningfully from peak levels, we would expect benefits from an easing cost environment to aid earnings growth. However, spot rates suggest aluminum will likely see the highest inflation in 2026. Moreover, oil/natural gas prices remain volatile owing to ongoing geopolitical tensions, which, along with pressure from tariffs, could further limit the extent of gross margin expansion ahead. Ultimately, we believe the input cost environment will be much more accommodative for our Staples universe next year, which along with an increased focus on productivity (as supply chains and service levels have normalized), should support continued margin expansion and reinvestments ahead. We highlight HSY as best placed to benefit from this dynamic, where we expect gross margin expansion to drive EPS growth in 2026. We also highlight potential tailwinds for MDLZ, HRL, and SFD.

Herzog noted where inflation and deflation trends linger in the commodity market this year:

Hershey versus cocoa futures (inverted)...

Conversations so far are that any price relief for chocolate at the supermarket won't show up until the 2H26. We're watching Hershey next year...

Herzog also told clients to buy nicotine, energy drink, candy, and beauty stocks heading into 2026 as a stronger consumer backdrop emerges.

Tyler Durden Mon, 12/22/2025 - 05:45

Trump Announces $1.3 Billion In Sales Of 'Gold Card' Visas Since Dec. 10

President Donald Trump announced Dec. 19 that his administration has sold more than $1.3 billion worth of “Trump Gold Cards,” a new immigration program offering expedited residency to high-skilled foreign talent, with proceeds going toward paying down the national debt.

In remarks to the press, Trump said that sales had exceeded $1.3 billion and described the Gold Card as a “green card on steroids.”

He said the option would allow companies to retain graduates from elite institutions, such as Harvard and Wharton, who might otherwise have to go back to their native countries upon graduation.

“They graduate from the top schools,” Trump said. “These people want to hire them. Now you’re able to buy a card and you’re able to keep people in the country.”

Trump highlighted how his immigration policy focuses on securing top talent and curbing illegal immigration.

“Under the Biden administration, 25 million people came in, and they came from prisons and mental institutions, and they were drug dealers and all sorts of people came in that shouldn’t be here. They came from the jails,” he said.

President Donald Trump holds up a "Trump Gold Card" as he makes an announcement from the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Dec. 19, 2025. Brendan Smialowski /AFP via Getty Images

As Kimberly Hayek details below for The Epoch Times, the Gold Card allows businesses to purchase the visas for foreign workers, enabling them to stay indefinitely with work rights. The visa costs $1 million in the form of a donation to the U.S. federal government.

The program, which has been challenged legally, began accepting applications on Dec. 10.

Trump launched the Gold Card in September with an executive order and instituted a $100,000 fee for H-1B visa applicants. The H1B fee exempts current holders and renewals, according to the White House.

Trump first proposed the Gold Card visas in February, floating a $5 million price tag for residency and a path to citizenship.

“Wealthy people will be coming into our country,” he said when he proposed the program. The administration launched a dedicated website in June.

When launching the immigration Gold Card program, Trump said it would “reduce our taxes greatly and hopefully bring some great people into our country.”

Payments go straight to the U.S. Treasury. Howard Lutnick, secretary of commerce, was instrumental in launching the program, he said.

Twenty states, however, filed a lawsuit against the $100,000 H-1B fee, arguing it goes beyond executive authority.

Meanwhile, proponents say the program fixes longstanding issues with the H1-B lottery system.

Tyler Durden Mon, 12/22/2025 - 04:15

Can The Dark Ages Return?

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via VictoreHanson.com,

Western civilization arose in the 8th century B.C. Greece. Some 1,500 city-states emerged from a murky, illiterate 400-year-old Dark Age. That chaos followed the utter collapse of the palatial culture of Mycenaean Greece.

But what reemerged were constitutional government, rationalism, liberty, freedom of expression, self-critique, and free markets—what we know now as the foundation of a unique Western civilization.

The Roman Republic inherited and enhanced the Greek model.

For a millennium, the Republic and subsequent Empire spread Western culture, eventually to be inseparable from Christianity.

From the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf and from the Rhine and Danube to the Sahara, there were a million square miles of safety, prosperity, progress, and science—until the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD.

What followed was a second European Dark Age, roughly from 500 to 1000 AD.

Populations declined. Cities eroded. Roman roads, aqueducts, and laws crumbled.

In place of the old Roman provinces arose tribal chieftains and fiefdoms.

Whereas once Roman law had protected even rural people in remote areas, during the Dark Ages, walls and stone were the only means of keeping safe.

Finally, at the end of the 11th century, the old values and know-how of the complex world of Graeco-Roman civilization gradually reemerged.

The slow rebirth was later energized by the humanists and scientists of the Renaissance, Reformation, and eventually the 200-year European Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Contemporary Americans do not believe that our current civilization could self-destruct a third time in the West, followed by an impoverished and brutal Dark Age.

But what caused these prior returns to tribalism and loss of science, technology, and the rule of law?

Historians cite several causes of societal collapse—and today they are hauntingly familiar.

Like people, societies age. Complacency sets in.

The hard work and sacrifice that built the West also creates wealth and leisure. Such affluence is taken for granted by later generations. What created success is eventually ignored—or even mocked.

Expenditures and consumption outpace income, production, and investment.

Child-rearing, traditional values, strong defense, love of country, religiosity, meritocracy, and empirical education fade away.

The middle class of autonomous citizens disappear. Society bifurcates between a few lords and many peasants.

Tribalism—the pre-civilizational bonds based on race, religion, or shared appearance—remerge.

National government fragments into regional and ethnic enclaves.

Borders disappear. Mass migrations are unchecked. The age-old bane of anti-Semitism reappears.

The currency inflates, losing its value and confidence. General crassness in behavior, speech, dress, and ethics replaces prior norms.

Transportation, communications, and infrastructure all decline.

The end is near when the necessary medicine is seen as worse than the disease.

Such was life around 450 AD in Western Europe.

The contemporary West might raise similar red flags.

Fertility has dived well below 2.0 in almost every Western country.

Public debt is nearing unsustainable levels. The dollar and euro have lost much of their purchasing power.

It is more common in universities to damn than honor the gifts of the Western intellectual past.

Yet, the reading and analytical skills of average Westerners, and Americans in particular, steadily decline.

Can the general population even operate or comprehend the ever-more sophisticated machines and infrastructure that an elite group of engineers and scientists creates?

The citizen loses confidence in an often corrupt elite, who neither will protect their nations’ borders nor spend sufficient money on collective defense.

The cures are scorned.

Do we dare address spiraling deficits, unsustainable debt, and corrupt bureaucracies and entitlements?

Even mention of reform is smeared as “greedy,” “racist,” “cruel,” or even “fascist” and “Nazi.”

In our times, relativism replaces absolute values in the eerie replay of the latter Roman Empire.

Critical legal theory claims crimes are not really crimes.

Critical race theory postulates that all of society is guilty of insidious bias, demanding reparations in cash and preferences in admission and hiring.

Salad-bowl tribalism replaces assimilation, acculturation, and integration of the old melting pot.

Despite a far wealthier, far more leisured, and far more scientific contemporary America, was it safer to walk in New York or take the subway in 1960 than now?

Are high school students better at math now or 70 years ago?

Are movies and television more entertaining and ennobling in 1940 or now?

Are nuclear, two-parent families the norm currently or in 1955?

We are blessed to live longer and healthier lives than ever—even as the larger society around us seems to teeter.

Yet, the West historically is uniquely self-introspective and self-critical.

Reform and Renaissance historically are more common than descents back into the Dark Ages.

But the medicine for decline requires unity, honesty, courage, and action—virtues now in short supply on social media, amid popular culture, and among the political class.

Tyler Durden Sun, 12/21/2025 - 23:20

Burnt-Out US Air Traffic Controllers Rerouting Their Careers To Australia

In a year in which they endured chronic understaffing, 60-hour weeks, uneven shifts and even having to work without a paycheck for a stretch, many US air traffic controllers are re-evaluating their careers, with a growing number chasing happiness on the other side of the world -- in Australia. 

According to a Wall Street Journal report on the phenomenon, these controllers aren't chasing more money. Indeed, some of the controllers who've taken the leap were happy to take a lower salary in exchange for less on-the-job stress and a better work-life balance. One of them is Austin Brewis, a 29-year-old who gave up a $145,000 salary at an air traffic facility in Illinois for a $137,000 one in Sydney.

Three-meter-high, corrugated-iron kangaroos adjacent to the main runway at Canberra Airport (Canberra Times)

Brewis told the Journal that 60-hour workweeks had worn him down. More than 41% of US controllers work 10 hours a day for six days straight, according to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. It's not just the high number of hours -- Brewis worked them in staggered schedules that have start and finish times changing from day to day. Chasing three-day breaks to enjoy meaningful relief from the heavy hour-load, many controllers take a "2-2-1" schedule. As the Journal explained in an earlier article: 

Controllers work two swing shifts, two day shifts, and one midnight shift. The second day shifts ends at 2 p.m. and the subsequent midnight shift begins at 10 p.m., just eight hours later. Such a schedule disrupts circadian rhythms, creating fatigue on the midnight shift.... 2-2-1 has long been called "the rattler," since it can come back and bite the controller, degrading his performance. 

“That grinds you down after years of doing it,” Brewis said. The contrast Down Under is stark -- with the average Australian controller's work-week spanning just 36 hours. Heightening the attraction for younger controllers is a guarantee of having some weekends off each year. Brewis said he'd have had to put at least 10 years under his belt before he'd routinely have weekends off in America, where that pleasure is driven by seniority. 

A woman in a control tower in Brisbane, Australia (Courier Mail) 

“It’s absolutely disgusting how much better their lifestyles are than ours," air traffic controller Chris Dickinson told the Journal. After 13 years controlling US airspace, he's now working in Sydney. He said concerns he had about anxiety or depression have evaporated, and he's shed 20 extra pounds too. 

In an ominous indication that Australia could become a chronic driver of controller attrition in America, when Brewis stepped into an Australian classroom for his entry training earlier this year, he found that 8 of his 10 classmates were Americans. Government-owned Airservices Australia says it isn't setting out to poach Americans from the FAA. However, of 100 controllers it expects to bring on board this year, 36 are Americans. “Qualified controllers are welcome to apply from any country,” a spokesman said. 

While those kind of numbers aren't striking in the context of a US controller force that exceeds 13,750, the chronically-undermanned FAA doesn't need any more head-count headwinds. By the National Air Traffic Controllers Association's math, the FAA is operating with a 3,800-controller shortage. 

That's not just a burden for air traffic controllers and FAA bureaucrats, it's a worrisome state of affairs for the flying public, which has seen too many scary headlines about disasters, near-disasters and mishaps in recent months: 

• Reagan Tower Reportedly Understaffed When Army Helicopter Collided With Passenger Jet
• Another Near-Disaster At DC Airport: Delta Jet Narrowly Misses USAF T-38
• Mapping Every Understaffed Air Traffic Control Tower In The US

Tyler Durden Sun, 12/21/2025 - 22:45

2 More Heritage Foundation Board Members Resign

Authored by Emel Akan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

WASHINGTON—Two more members of conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation’s Board of Trustees, Shane McCullar and Abby Spencer Moffat, resigned Dec. 16, citing concerns over the organization’s direction and approach to combating anti-Semitism.

Exterior view of the Heritage Foundation building in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 18, 2025. Terri Wu/The Epoch Times

In a statement, Moffat said that leaving the board was a difficult but necessary decision.

“Heritage’s handling of recent challenges reveals a drift from the principles that once defined its leadership,” she said.

“When an institution hesitates to confront harmful ideas and allows lapses in judgment to stand, it forfeits the moral authority on which its influence depends.”

Moffat is recognized as one of the most powerful women in philanthropy and has been a major donor to the think tank through the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation.

In 2023, the foundation announced a $25 million commitment, one of the largest gifts in the think tank’s 50-year history.

McCullar raised similar concerns in his statement.

“No institution that hesitates to condemn anti-Semitism and hatred—or that gives a platform to those who spread them—can credibly claim to uphold the vision that once made the Heritage Foundation the world’s most respected conservative think-tank,” McCullar said.

“I leave with respect for the Heritage Foundation’s past, but I cannot support the course it has chosen for its future.”

Another board member, Robert P. George, a Princeton University professor, resigned last month, citing the same reason.

The controversy erupted after Heritage President Kevin Roberts defended Tucker Carlson’s interview with controversial live streamer Nick Fuentes, known for his anti-Israel and anti-Semitic views.

In his Oct. 30 video commenting on Carlson’s interview, Roberts said that “Christians can critique the state of Israel without being anti-Semitic.”

Roberts also said that the think-tank would not bow to the “venomous coalition” that is attacking and trying to “cancel” Carlson over the Fuentes interview.

Roberts later offered an apology, expressing his regret for the video he posted.

“I made a mistake, and I let you down, and I let down this institution. And I am sorry for that. Period. Full Stop,” Roberts said in a video from the foundation’s staff meeting, which The Washington Beacon first published.

“I didn’t know much about this Fuentes guy—still don’t, which underscores the mistake,” Roberts said.

Roberts told staff that he was willing to resign but felt a “moral obligation” to address the situation.

Tyler Durden Sun, 12/21/2025 - 22:10

Rand Paul Calls Partial Release Of Epstein Files A 'Big Mistake' For Trump

During an interview on ABC’s This Week with ABC’s Jonathan Karl on Sunday, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky delivered a blunt warning about the administration’s handling of the Epstein records, echoing concerns raised by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who has been relentless on the issue.

Massie forced the release vote and has accused Attorney General Pam Bondi of violating the law by slow-walking and limiting disclosure. 

Paul did not dispute the core of that argument.

Instead, he went further, laying out exactly why half-measures on Epstein are political poison.

“I’ve supported transparency on the Epstein files from the beginning,” Paul said. “I’ve voted repeatedly to release them. I think it’s a good idea.”

Paul explained why that approach is doomed to fail.

“I think that trust in government is at a low ebb, and that people need to trust that justice is the same whether you’re rich or poor,” he said.

“And people tend to believe that some rich people got off scot-free in this — in the Epstein case, the Epstein files.”

 Despite the Democrats’ attempts to weaponize the release of the files against Trump, the fact remains that the Biden administration sat on the files for four years—a decision that former Vice President Kamala Harris defends—despite endless rhetoric about transparency. Trump returned to office promising real transparency, and even Trump’s allies believe the administration has failed to live up to its promise fully.

Paul made clear that the administration’s fundamental mistake came when officials hyped the release and then appeared to back away once the spotlight intensified.

“I think it’s a big mistake,” Paul said.

“Look, the administration has struggled for months and months with something they initially ginned up and then sort of tried to tamp down.”

 Paul warned that partial disclosure guarantees prolonged political fallout.

“So, any evidence or any kind of indication that there’s not a full reveal on this, this will just plague them for months and months more,” he said.

He’s right. Democrats have been insinuating for months that the Epstein files would somehow incriminate Trump, despite zero evidence. 

Paul offered simple advice that should not require a Senate seat to understand.

“So, my suggestion would be — give up all the information, release it,” he said.

“What’s going to happen to people if they don’t? That will play out over time. But my suggestion to them is be transparent and release everything the law requires of you.”

When Trump signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and the documents failed to deliver the left’s long-promised bombshell, Democrats pivoted to conspiracy theories and bureaucratic excuses. For example, Democrats pounced when a photo from the Epstein files was briefly removed from the online cache of Epstein-related material. This led to conspiracy theories that the Department of Justice was trying to protect Trump. 

In an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche discussed the photo and the reason for the redactions in the files.

Blanche explained the removal had “nothing to do with President Trump” and was instead prompted by concerns over victim privacy after officials realized the images contained identifiable women. He stressed that DOJ policy allows victims, their lawyers, or advocacy groups to request that any document or photo identifying them be taken down and reviewed, a process he said explained the temporary disappearance of the materials. 

"Well, you can see in that photo, there’s photographs of women," Blanche said. "And so we learned after releasing that photograph that there were concerns about those, about those women, and the fact that we had put that photo up. So we pulled that photo down."

Blanche also noted that numerous photos of Trump with Jeffrey Epstein have long been public, and that Trump himself has acknowledged socializing with Epstein in the 1990s and early 2000s before cutting ties with him years before Epstein’s 2006 arrest. Given that history, Blanche dismissed as “laughable” the notion that the department would selectively hide a single image to protect the president when “dozens” of similar photos are already in circulation. 

.@DAGToddBlanche: "The absurdity of us pulling down a photo — a single photo — because President Trump was in it is laughable, and the fact that everybody is trying to act like that's the case is a reflection of their true motivation." pic.twitter.com/9u7ZjgL4m7

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) December 21, 2025

Democrats have failed to produce a promised “smoking gun” linking Trump to Epstein’s crimes despite years of access to the files under the Biden administration, and are now seizing on procedural moves in the document release to sustain conspiracy theories. Nevertheless, if Republicans want to prove they mean what they say, the path forward is obvious. Release everything required by law. Let the facts land where they may. The longer Washington drags its feet, the louder the suspicion grows, and the harder it becomes to argue that this time is different.

Tyler Durden Sun, 12/21/2025 - 21:35

DOJ Seeking Appeals On Dismissals Of Criminal Cases Against James Comey, Letitia James

Authored by Troy Myers via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is appealing the dismissal of a pair of criminal cases against New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey, according to new court documents filed on Friday.

(Left) New York Attorney General Letitia James leaves the Walter E. Hoffman United States Courthouse following an arraignment hearing in Norfolk, Va., on Oct. 24, 2025. (Right) James Comey, former FBI director, speaks at the Barnes & Noble Upper West Side in New York City on May 19, 2025. Win McNamee, Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

James was indicted in October by a grand jury with charges of bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution. Comey was charged in September with lying to and obstructing Congress during his testimony in 2020 about the FBI’s investigation into false claims of ties between President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.

Both had pleaded not guilty, and their cases were thrown out in late November.

The newest appeals by the DOJ mark the latest move in what’s been a series of unsuccessful legal actions taken against the New York attorney general specifically.

James’s original case was dismissed in late November after U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie ruled that former Trump lawyer Lindsey Halligan’s appointment by the president as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia was unlawful.

The judge tossed Comey’s case for the same reason that Halligan’s appointment violated laws restricting the DOJ from naming top prosecutors without a Senate confirmation. Halligan had presented Comey’s case to a federal grand jury by herself five days before the statute of limitations would expire on the former FBI director’s testimony he gave to Congress.

In Currie’s Nov. 24 decision, she wrote both James and Comey’s cases were a “unique, if not unprecedented, situation where an unconstitutionally appointed prosecutor” used powers that she “did not lawfully possess.”

The DOJ vowed to continue pursuing charges.

Since the case was dismissed, DOJ prosecutors attempted twice this month to secure a new indictment against James, but a grand jury refused to bring charges both times. The New York official has repeatedly claimed the prosecution against her is “baseless.”

In the latest legal filings, the DOJ is appealing James and Comey’s case dismissals, along with several other actions, including the judge’s decision that found Halligan’s appointment and her signing of the indictments unlawful.

James’s indictment alleged that she lied about her plans for a Virginia home, for which she obtained loan terms that would have saved her approximately $19,000 over the life of the loan. Her lawyer said the indictments against James were a “mockery of our justice system” and accused the president of “political vendetta.”

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the appeals.

The attorneys for both Comey and James also did not respond to a request for comment on the latest development in their cases.

Tyler Durden Sun, 12/21/2025 - 21:00

Somali 'Medicaid Mogul' Accused Of Looting Maine Taxpayers, Family Allegedly Put Bounty On Reporter

If you thought the alleged Medicaid fraud in Minnesota by Somalis, which federal prosecutors say could reach $9 billion, was insane, wait until you read the latest report from The Maine Wire: the head of a local nonprofit is accused of lashing out at a local journalist over an investigation, while members of his family allegedly put a bounty on the head of a journalist in Somalia for sharing the reporting.

Related note: this picture has never appeared in one of the major newspapers in Maine. I’m not sure if any other outlet has published it. pic.twitter.com/dVQ2j1cAgc

— Steve Robinson (@SteveRob) December 21, 2025

Earlier this month, Abdullahi Ali, the Executive Director of Health Services contractor Gateway Community Services, was accused of ripping off taxpayers.

Public forensic investigation into Gateway Community Services has revealed this... 

NewsNation spoke with a whistleblower who spilled the beans: false records were filed for services that were never provided...

A former Gateway employee, Christopher Bernardini, said the nonprofit was reimbursed with tax dollars from Maine's Medicaid program and later with federal tax dollars from the Paycheck Protection Program.

While heading up the nonprofit in Maine, Ali was also running for President of Jubbaland in Africa. He boasted to a Kenyan media outlet about how he helped raise funds for the Jubaland Somali army to buy guns and bullets.

Here’s another video of Medicaid mogul Abdullahi Ali, a top ally of Gov. Janet Mills and Shenna Bellows, talking about how he plans to use the militia he bankrolled in southern Somalia.

Gateway Community Services said it was racist to describe him as a “wannabe warlord.” pic.twitter.com/dkhbGgzROl

— Steve Robinson (@SteveRob) December 20, 2025

Main Wire's Steve Robinson pointed out that Ali "threatened to murder a journalist in Somalia who shared our reporting."

Robinson continued:

Gateway Community Services CEO Abdullahi Ali yesterday attacked me personally, and now his fellow clan members — his son and cousin — are threatening to murder a journalist in Somalia who shared our reporting. Why does Gov. Janet Mills continue to fund this organization with MaineCare dollars and no-bid contracts? And why are Democrats cravenly smearing the character of anyone who exposes fraud or calls out corruption?

Abdullahi Ali's son and cousin are openly placing bounties on a Somali journalist's head and calling for his killing. All because they've helped shine light on Ali's migrant agency over-billing MaineCare (~$800k per DHHS) and the fraud allegations made against his company. Ali's former employee has made credible and detailed allegations of systematic fraud. This employee has shown great courage by revealing how Ali allegedly directed his company to invent fake MaineCare claims and defraud the taxpayers of Maine.

Ali has never denied these allegations. Instead he has attacked me. Now his allies in Jubaland are calling for violence against journalists for exposing the truth, while his allies in Maine turn a blind eye or smear the reporters and politicians exposing fraud and corruption.

Attorney General Aaron Frey refuses to investigate credible allegations of fraud against Gateway. Instead, the thugs in the Mills Administration had the whistleblower audited. Imagine that! Exposing corruption, at great personal risk, only to have the Mills Team pull a mafia tactic and sic Maine Revenue Services on you.

Democrats are not only defending this behavior from the migrant NGO complex, many of them are part of it. Rep. Deqa Dhalac worked at Gateway as Assistant Executive Director while the alleged fraud was happening. So did Rep. Yusuf Yusuf. Shenna Bellows fundraised this summer with Safiya Khalid, former special assistant to Abdullahi Ali. Ekhlas Ahmed, a former Gateway employee, runs the "Office of New Americans" for Janet Mills.

Gov. Janet Mills has the authority to stop payments to Gateway, but instead she has issued them no-bid contracts. Hundreds of thousands of dollars that could have gone to Maine schools or to low-income Mainers are instead funneled into Gateway Community Services and other migrant NGOs.

Why?

Because Gateway's offices in Lewiston and Portland are basically arms of the Maine Democratic Party. Those offices host vote harvesting operations that recruit migrants into welfare programs and supply Democrat votes — all paid for with tax dollars.

For those who care to pay attention, all the receipts, the contracts, the documents, and the evidence is contained within the Substack post below and the linked posts.

"Is this the type of diversity we wanted here in Maine. Are you f*cking liberals happy?" one perturbed resident said on TikTok.

BREAKING:

A Somali politician in Maine has placed a BOUNTY on the head of a journalist for reporting fraud in Maine’s Mainecare (medical).

WTF is happening in America?!

Time to KICK these LOWLIFE’S OUT. pic.twitter.com/JyAlR8LO1N

— Mila Joy (@Milajoy) December 7, 2025

In a recent interview with The National News Desk, Maine State Sen. Matt Harrington said, "It's disgusting to me that they would do this."

"You can't rob a bank for millions of dollars. You shouldn't be able to rob taxpayers of millions of dollars and get away with it. There absolutely needs to be a criminal investigation into this immediately," Harrington said.

From Minnesota to Maine ... What Democratic-run state will be next where investigations uncover appalling allegations of public resources being looted by migrants?

The parallels between Minnesota and Maine are so eerie.

In both states, there can be zero trust that DHHS and the Gov aren’t an extension of criminal orgs siphoning money from welfare.

Only federal intervention can end this culture of fear and retribution. https://t.co/Odm22ycavC

— Steve Robinson (@SteveRob) December 20, 2025

Maryland? California?

Tyler Durden Sun, 12/21/2025 - 19:15

Weekend:
• Schedule for Week of December 21, 2025

• Ten Economic Questions for 2026

Monday:
• At 8:30 AM ET, Chicago Fed National Activity Index for November. This is a composite index of other data.
From CNBC: Pre-Market Data and Bloomberg futures S&P 500 are up 21 and DOW futures are up 100 (fair value).

Oil prices were down over the last week with WTI futures at $56.79 per barrel and Brent at $60.76 per barrel. A year ago, WTI was at $70, and Brent was at $73 - so WTI oil prices are down about 19% year-over-year.

Here is a graph from Gasbuddy.com for nationwide gasoline prices. Nationally prices are at $2.80 per gallon. A year ago, prices were at $3.01 per gallon, so gasoline prices are down $0.21 year-over-year.