Global Market Comments
January 10, 2025
Fiat Lux
Featured Trades:
(A CHEAP HEDGE FOR THIS MARKET)
The S&P 500 is now 3.2% of its all-time high at 6,100 and is showing definientia signs of rolling over.
So financial advisors, pension fund managers, and cautious individuals have been ringing me up asking what is the best way to hedge the heady 23% gain in 2024.
You can forget about buying the Volatility Index (VIX), (VXX). The huge contango, the discount front month futures contracts have too far month ones, almost guarantees that your hedge will be enormously expensive and expire worthless before it has the chance to do any good.
No, there’s a much better way to do this.
Buy deep out-of-the-money, long-dated S&P 500 (SPY) put options. You want to go deep out-of-the-money so your insurance policy is cheap.
You also want to go long-dated, so time decay doesn’t kill you and your option position lives long enough to do some good. By long-dated, I’m thinking five months out, like the June 20, 2025 option expiration date.
All of this logic points to the (SPY) June 2025 $530 puts today priced at $8.00, which as of today are 10% out-of-the-money.
Here is the beauty of this position. A put option rises in value in falling markets. But so does option-implied volatility, creating a leveraged hockey stick effect on the value of your put position. And deep out-of-the-money options always see implied volatilities rise much faster than near-money ones.
You don’t need the market to drop the full 10% to make enough profit in this position to offset losses elsewhere in your portfolio.
A much more likely 5% market correction would cause the value of the June 2025 $530 puts to jump from $8.00 to $14.00, a gain of 75%, as long as that drop happens soon. However, add in an expected pop in implied options volatility and the profit could be as much as 100%.
So how many June 2025 $250 puts should you buy?
Let’s say you have a $100,000 portfolio. Only two put option contracts would provide enough coverage for your entire exposure ($100,000/100 shares per contract/$530 (SPY) strike price) = 1.88 contracts rounded up to two. Two contracts of the June 2025 $530 puts will cost you $1,600 (2 X 100 shares per contract X $8.00).
In other words, $1,600 buys you an insurance policy on $100,000 portfolio exposure for six months. Sounds like a deal to me.
There are endless variations of this strategy. For example, it is a good idea to long-date your longs and short-date your shorts to maximize accelerated time decay in your favor.
In such a scenario you would stay long the six-month put option described above, but sell short one-month options against it, but with a strike 15% out of the money instead of 10%. I could go on and on. That cuts the cost of this hedge by two-thirds.
There are a few qualifications with such a simple hedge. Let’s say that you read the Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader and have a highly concentrated portfolio focused on technology and financial stocks.
In such case, the tracking error between the (SPY) and your portfolio will be large (after all, that is the point), and you may not get all the downside protection you want.
On the other hand, what if we really get the 10% correction? What if the black swans suddenly land in flocks? In that case, the value of your June 2025 $530 puts soar to at least $29, and more likely $32 when you add in the expected effects of rocketing implied volatilities. The value of your hedge rises to $3,200.
Yes, you don’t get complete 1:1 coverage. But it’s better than going into such a route naked, with no downside protection at all.
Let’s say you’re a cheapskate and you want your insurance policy for free. Yes, this can be done.
There is another hedging strategy that is far easier to execute. Just take a long cruise around the world. That way, corrections will come and go and you might not even know about it, unless your butler brings you an online copy of the Wall Street Journal every morning, as mine does.
This is the hedging strategy most of you have pursued for the past nine years and it has worked really well. At least you end up with a nice tan and some pleasant photos.
As for the June 2025 $530 puts, they’re most likely end up expiring worthless, but you’ll sleep better at night. Such is the price of peace.
(NVDA), (MSFT), (GOOGL), (AMD), (META)
You know what keeps catching my attention these days? The way artificial intelligence is sneaking into every corner of the market faster than my daughter can fix those broken calculators in her UC computer science class (more on that later).
Let me throw a number at you that made me sit up during my morning coffee: the global AI market, currently parked at half a trillion dollars, is barreling toward three trillion by 2032.
We're talking about a 20% compound annual growth rate, the kind of numbers that make even jaded old traders like me take notice.
I recently found myself poring over a 273-page congressional task force report on AI (yes, the things I do for you, dear reader).
Between coffee stains and margin notes that started looking like modern art, I discovered 66 findings and 89 recommendations that actually make sense. Imagine that – Congress getting something right about technology!
Speaking of getting things right, the FDA just pulled off something remarkable. They've created what they call "Predetermined Change Control Plans," which is bureaucrat-speak for letting AI medical companies update their algorithms without filing enough paperwork to deforest the Amazon.
This could help save the healthcare industry $13 billion in 2025 alone – not bad for a government initiative.
As expected, the usual names like Nvidia (NVDA), Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOGL), AMD (AMD), and Meta (META) have their hands all over this. They're building data centers that use enough power to light up Lake Tahoe twice over, and the numbers justify their aggressive expansion.
Corporate AI adoption shot up 270% between 2015 and 2019, with nearly one hundred million new AI-related jobs expected by 2025.
Even the Pentagon is getting into the game, pouring billions into AI development. Which makes sense – when you're looking at technology that could reshape global competition, you don't want to be left behind.
And the impact is spreading far beyond Silicon Valley. Take healthcare, for instance. Some 90% of U.S. hospitals are planning to implement AI solutions by 2025, driving the healthcare AI market from $12 billion to over $100 billion by 2030.
Remember when hospitals were still using fax machines? Some still are - probably the same ones with waiting room magazines from 2010. But now they're racing from those paper jams straight into AI diagnostics.
The congressional report flags what you'd expect - privacy concerns around AI handling sensitive medical data. After all, we're talking about systems that can access everything from your blood pressure readings to your insurance claims. But unlike those old fax machines, this technology is moving too fast for traditional regulations to keep up.
The task force gets it right: success with AI requires a delicate balance. Just like I tell my daughter about her computer science projects, this isn't just about the technology. It's about how we use it.
That means clear government guidelines, aggressive but responsible innovation from industry, and serious intellectual firepower from academia. Get this formula wrong, and we'll have bigger problems than misrouted faxes.
For those watching this digital gold rush (and I know you are), here's my take: AI isn't just another tech bubble filled with hot air and PowerPoint presentations.
The projected $15 trillion in global economic value by 2030 isn't just a number pulled out of thin air – it's the kind of growth that creates generational wealth opportunities.
Just remember what I always say about transformative technologies: there's a time to go all in (like buying tech stocks in 2009), and there's a time to be strategic.
Right now, we're in that sweet spot where the technology is real, but the market hasn't fully priced in the implications.
Speaking of implications, my daughter just texted me that her next computer science project involves teaching AI to recognize broken circuit boards. Given how fast this technology is moving, I wouldn't be surprised if next semester she's programming AI to fix the circuits itself.
And that's exactly why I'm keeping a close eye on this sector. When college sophomores are doing what billion-dollar companies were struggling with just a few years ago, you know you're onto something big.
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
January 8, 2025
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(BUY THE MICROSOFT DIP)
(MSFT)
How will Microsoft grow their stock in 2025?
In short, MSFT are building what the market wants, and what the market wants are AI data centers.
The stock price should be rewarded if they can deliver these new AI data centers to the market.
The data center increase shows no signs of slowing down and I do believe this puts a floor under tech stocks.
To be honest, there has been a lot of bad energy surrounding the current tech business models because many of them are getting stale.
Why upgrade to the next iPhone when there isn’t much of an upgrade?
The refresh cycle data shows people are standing pat and using their own tech longer and that is bad news for tech software and hardware companies.
So instead of trying to squeeze the remaining juice out of a stale model, beefy balance sheet tech companies are driving full force into AI investment even though this investment doesn’t reciprocate with any sort of revenue stream.
It’s a little bit of a build it and it will come mentality which I do believe is quite risky and at some point, we are due for a heavy selloff.
That selloff could get triggered if the US 10-year interest rate blows past 5.5%, then all bets are off.
Microsoft says it plans to spend $80 billion on building AI data centers this year.
Microsoft has poured billions of dollars over the last two years into Anthropic, as well as Elon Musk’s startup xAI.
Advances by these firms would not have been possible without new partnerships founded on large-scale infrastructure investments that serve as the essential foundation of AI innovation and use.
The $80 billion would reflect a significant increase on the $53 billion capex spend Microsoft made in 2023.
Documents leaked last April revealed it had more than 5GW of capacity at its disposal, with plans to add an additional 1.5GW in the first half of 2025. It is possible this has since been revised upwards as it looks to provide compute power to OpenAI to run ChatGPT and its other AI services, as well as supporting its own Azure public cloud platform.
Part of this is definitely the management at OpenAI namely CEO Sam Altman. He is seen as the avant-garde of AI and the leader of the whole movement. He is demanding a massive build out and investors have largely taken him at this word. Nobody has really questioned him and that stems partly from no one really knows where this AI thing is headed in the future, but we are convinced that buckets of data space are needed for whatever comes next.
My issue is what if the thing that comes next is a cataclysmic letdown, then where do tech stocks head?
Most likely they would head for the gutter.
So we give the benefit of the doubt to this gargantuan AI infrastructure build-out and it feels like we are flying blind in a snowstorm, but that is what the market is telling us and the market is always right until it is not.
Sometimes tech does figure it out, and we are really hoping there is something of great value at the end of the build-out.
Buy the dip in MSFT until the AI infrastructure story is killed off.
(PLAYING GAMES AT THE END OF EACH ADMINISTRATION)
January 8, 2025
Hello everyone
(This is a brief look into the work of Lawrence McDonald’s text How to Listen When Markets Speak: Risk, Myths, and Investment Opportunities in a Radically Reshaped Economy. We learn what some of his research shows, and this piece here is via his blog, The Bear Traps Report.
Over the last 250 years or so, all American political parties have played “games” at the closing stage of each administration. Take 2000, for instance, when the incoming George W. Bush team discovered that every keyboard in the White House and other administrative officers was missing the “W” key.
The outgoing Clinton staff had removed all the “W” keys to annoy the new administration after an extremely contentious election.
The damage was no big deal – around $15,000.
The outgoing Biden administration will be no different. But their mischievous acts may be a little more unpalatable. Under the existing budget, Bien is opening the floodgates with spending.
Spending for 2025 is expected to exceed $2 Tr by the time Biden leaves DC on January 20th. This is over 30% of the annual budget, and Trump will have to cut spending for the rest of the year to stay within the limits of the allocated budget. This could mean a notable slowdown in GDP growth in the first quarters of 2025.
The government’s fiscal year started on October 1st, and Biden could be on course to spend almost $2TR by the end of December and a deficit that may exceed $800bl (+60%y/y).
So, when Trump steps in on January 20th, he has three-quarters left of the government’s fiscal year; by then Biden has possibly spent more than 30% of the total allocated budget.
Lunatics – as Usual – on Capitol Hill
Congress, in its usual fashion, has failed to agree on the next budget, so the government is currently operating under a “continuing resolution” (CR). This continuing resolution means the government is allowed to spend the same amount of money they spent last year, which is $6.75TR. The government’s fiscal year started on October 1st, and Biden is on a run rate to spend almost $2TR by the end of December and a deficit that may exceed $800bl (+60% y/y). So, when Trump comes in on January 20th, he has three quarters left of the government’s fiscal year, but by then, Biden has spent more than 30% of the total allocated budget. This forces Trump to cut spending right off the bat. We estimate spending could drop by $500bl quarter over quarter, or 25% from Q4 to Q1. This is an estimate, and the timing of spending can change. But the fact is that Biden is emptying the coffers before Trump gets in. Every week, more money and weapons are sent to Ukraine, more subsidies are given to semiconductor makers to build plants in the US, and more government employees are hired.
US Yields Surge While Others Languish
Since September, US Yields have surged over 20% on Biden’s sugar high, while Canadian and German yields are down since then, Chinese yields have collapsed, and UK yields are only modestly above the September level.
Government Job Growth Twice the Rate of the Private Sector
Private sector job growth has lagged government job growth significantly in the last year as the government keeps hiring people.
Why is this so Bad?
We believe that this spending deluge by Biden on his way out is partially to blame for the surge in bond yields in Q4. Some may say it’s because of Trump and his promised tax cuts, but the Republican House majority is so slim that it’s unclear how much of a fiscal stimulus Trump is actually able to get through Congress. Also, the incoming Senate majority leader Thune (R, SD) has said he will only get one bill through reconciliation in FY 2025 and another one in FY2026. His priority is on immigration and energy legislation, so a fiscal spending bill might not come until late 2025 or early 2026 if anything. But if yields are being pushed up by all this spending in Q4, then what will happen if spending falls back in early 2025? And what will happen to GDP growth? A $500bl drop in government spending from Q4 to Q1 is the equivalent of 1.7ppt of growth. So, if Q4 nominal growth comes in at 5.7% annualized, this could drop to 4% in Q1 if government spending slows down accordingly.
Treasury’s Reliance on Short-Term Debt Exploded in Recent Years
Election Rigging? We are witnessing a Covid era like spending in 2024 without a pandemic. The Treasury Department has come to rely on short-term bills to fund the government. But with $36Tr of debt, the Treasury has to issue bills almost every day to keep funding the government and to refund maturing debt.
Interest Payments on the Federal Debt Load
2026: $2.1T?
2025: $1.5T?
2024: $910B
2023: $658B
2022: $475B
2021: $352B
2020: $224B
*CBO data, Bloomberg. The average weighted coupon on the U.S. debt load is about 2.7% vs. over 4.5% for 10-year U.S. Treasuries. As bonds mature, they get refinanced at much higher yields.
$10Tr of Debt Refinancing Next Year
In 2024 Treasury faced around $10Tr of maturing debt. To refinance this debt, it issued a whopping $26Tr of bills and bonds. More than 84% of that paper was short-term bills with a maturity of 6 months or less. Treasury keeps re-issuing bills with a maturity of 4 to 8 weeks or 3,4 to 6 months, which are the most popular maturities in a continuing, ever-increasing roll down of the debt, day after day, month after month.
Apple Long-Term Bonds and Interest Rates
ALERT – By issuing nearly a colossal load of extremely short-term bills, Janet Yellen succeeded in suppressing bond volatility in an election year and, in our view, strategically placing that bond market volatility into 2025 after the election. You can “why” see above, she wanted LESS long-term paper in circulation markets in the election year. Now, in 2025 – this paper has to be rolled over and termed out into longer-dated bonds. The USA is behaving like a financially trapped emerging market country. Living on the “front end” of the yield curve is a VERY dangerous game. The Apple AAPL 2.55% bonds due 2060 are trading down at 57 cents on the dollar. If long-term bond yields go to 6%, take a guess where this bond will trade. Near 47 cents on the dollar? Now think of the trillions of USD loans issued in 2017-2021 on bank balance (commercial real estate, mortgages, corporate debt outstanding). Losses are in the trillions of dollars with higher incoming interest rates.
Interest Rates UP – Bond Prices DOWN
Never, ever forget that 6% today is equivalent to the destructive capacity of 10% twenty years ago. Interest rates up, mean bond prices down. A 1% move in interest rates higher today is an entirely different, far more lethal equation.
Incoming Stress Points
In 2025 the U.S. Treasury faces $9.6Tr of maturities in their so-called publicly held debt. In Q1 alone — the government faces $5.58Tr of maturities (bonds coming due, redemption), but 86% of those are short-term bills that the Treasury department rolls over into new 4-week, 8-week, 3,4, or 6-month bills, among others. As a result, almost daily bill auctions are coming to a theater near you, as the Treasury Department mindlessly keeps pushing new paper into the market to pay back the colossal amount of maturing debt.
Is There Any Reason to Buy Treasuries?
The new Treasury department under Scott Bessent may reduce bill issuance a bit and increase coupon paying issuance, just to alleviate some of the pressure on the bills market and extend the duration of outstanding US debt. Now that the big slush fund that bought all these bills, the so-called Reverse Repo Facility (RRP), is close to being depleted, it will be harder to sell all that short-term paper. In addition, Goldman Sachs expects that the Federal Reserve will stop the run-off of treasuries from its balance sheet by the end of January and begin buying treasuries again with the proceeds of the maturing MBS on its balance sheet. As such, the Fed becomes a modest buyer of treasuries next year, which allows the Treasury to increase coupon issuance without disrupting the long end.
One big bullish catalyst for treasuries would be a regulatory change to exempt treasuries from the Supplemental Leverage Ratio (SLR). It is unclear if and when this would be implemented, although Bessent was hinting at regulatory relief for banks to boost banks’ treasury holdings. Exempting treasuries allows banks to hold more Treasuries on their balance sheets without needing to hold additional capital against them, freeing up the capacity for banks to participate more actively in the Treasury market. It’s unclear how much treasury demand that would create, but in 2021 when the temporary SLR exemption was reinstated after COVID, prime dealers reduced their Treasury holdings from $250bl to $125bl in 2 months. A change in the SLR ratio may come but is going to take months before the rules are changed. A phase-out of QT for treasuries would be a more immediate, albeit more modest, relief for the bond market. According to this timeline, the Fed will end up buying $100bl of treasuries in 2025, a big change from the $500bl of treasury sales in 2024.
¹https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-jun-12-na-clinton12-story.html
The Fed has been Politicized.
We have been very critical of Yellen’s term at the Treasury, but upon some further reflection, we think it’s really the case that Yellen’s only real issue was acting in the short-term interests of her boss and her party as opposed to thinking longer-term about how the government finances itself on a sustainable basis.
Her decision to fund the government with T-bills over duration securities and violate long-standing Treasury Department “norms” was incredibly short-sighted, but as someone who works for the President, ORDERS to follow.
Many have been super critical of her for these decisions because she should know what they would lead to and how really what she (and Powell together) has done is favor asset owners and the wealthy over everyone else in America, exacerbating wealth inequality to precarious levels in this country while still not bringing inflation back down to target. So ultimately, her decisions got her team knocked out of office anyway.
Looking forward, though, the issue is that there is no one in the government who is really thinking about and acting on behalf of the longer-term interests of the country when it comes to how much debt we are raising and how we are financing the government. The myopia about these decisions to get the existing political party in control through the next election is incredibly concerning.
The Fed has said this is not their lane; however, they are elected to 14-year terms and are supposed to be above politics. There are things they could have done to offset the politicization of the Treasury. They chose not to, they continue to protect asset holders and the Treasury market, decisions that really just make them become political as well. They could have better neutralized Treasury’s political decisions through more active QT, actually selling securities instead of just rolling them off, not adding to their duration holdings such that the weighted average maturity (WAM) of their positions is longer than Treasury’s own WAM. Powell’s Fed needs to be getting way more criticism than they are currently about these decisions which have made it harder to bring inflation down for the average American.
So, if the Treasury is not going to think long-term and the Fed is not going to either (the Fed actually is complicit because they don’t allow any real treasury market dysfunction to exist, which would be the way to deal with these long-term issues by having the market/bond vigilantes do their thing), then who will? This is a problem, the bond market is starting to figure it out, term premiums are starting to normalize, and the new administration will have to make some big decisions early on in their term.
Maybe @elonmusk and @DOGE can look into this as well. Someone has to!
QI CORNER
NVIDIA just dropped Project DIGITS, a $3,000 personal AI supercomputer that looks like a Mac Mini but packs 1,000x the power of your average laptop
Powered by the Nvidia GB10 Superchip and based on the NVIDIA Grace Blackwell architecture, this supercomputer can run AI models with up to 200 billion parameters.
The crazy part? You can link two units to handle 405B parameter models.
From this perspective, OpenAI's GPT-4o is around 200B parameters while Grok-1 by xAI has 314B parameters.
Jensen Huang is single-handedly bringing data center-class AI computing to individual users.
Reported by Linas Beliunas
Cheers
Jacquie
Global Market Comments
January 8, 2025
Fiat Lux
2025 Annual Asset Class Review
A Global Vision
FOR PAID SUBSCRIBERS ONLY
Featured Trades:
(SPY), (QQQ), (IWM), (GS), (MS), (JPM), (BAC), (C), (BLK),
(TLT), (TBT), (JNK), (PHB), (HYG), (MUB), (LQD), (FXE), (FXY), (FXB), (FXE), (FXA)
(FCX), (BHP), (RIO), (VALE), (DBA), (DIG), (USO), (DUG), (UNG), (USO),
(XLE), (LNG), (CCJ), (VST), (SMR), (GLD), (DGP), (SLV), (PPTL), (PALL),
(ITB), (LEN), (KBH), (PHM), (DHI)
I am once again writing this report from a first-class sleeping cabin on Amtrak’s legendary California Zephyr.
By day, I have a comfortable seat next to a panoramic window. At night, they fold into two bunk beds, a single and a double. There is a shower, but only Houdini can navigate it.
I am anything but Houdini, so I foray downstairs to use the larger public hot showers. They are divine.
We are now pulling away from Chicago’s Union Station, leaving its hurried commuters, buskers, panhandlers, and majestic great halls behind. I love this building as a monument to American exceptionalism.
I am headed for Emeryville, California, just across the bay from San Francisco, some 2,121.6 miles away. That gives me only 56 hours to complete this report.
I tip my porter, Raymond, $100 in advance to make sure everything goes well during the long adventure and to keep me up to date with the onboard gossip.
The rolling and pitching of the car is causing my fingers to dance all over the keyboard. Microsoft’s Spellchecker can catch most of the mistakes, but not all of them.
Chicago’s Union Station
As both broadband and cell phone coverage are unavailable along most of the route, I have to rely on frenzied Internet searches during stops at major stations along the way, like Omaha, Salt Lake City, and Reno, to Google obscure data points and download the latest charts.
You know those cool maps in the Verizon stores that show the vast coverage of their cell phone networks? They are complete BS.
Who knew that 95% of America is off the grid? That explains so much about our country today.
I have posted many of my favorite photos from the trip below, although there is only so much you can do from a moving train and an iPhone 16 Pro.
Somewhere in Iowa
The Thumbnail Portfolio
Equities – buy dips, but sell rallies too
Bonds – avoid
Foreign Currencies – avoid
Commodities – avoid
Precious Metals – avoid
Energy – avoid
Real Estate – avoid
1) The Economy – Cooling
I expect a modest 2.0% real GDP growth with a 4.0% inflation rate, giving an unadjusted shrinkage of the economy of negative -2% for 2025. That is down from 0% in in 2024. This may sound discouraging, but believe me, this is the optimistic view. Some of my hedge fund buddies are expecting a zero return over the next four years.
Virtually all independent economists expect the new administration's economic policies will be a drag on both the US and global economies. Trade wars are bad for everyone. When your customers are impoverished, your own business turns south. This is a big deal, since the Magnificent Seven, which accounted for 70% of stock market gains last year, get 60% of their profits from abroad.
The ballooning National Debt is another concern. The last time Trump was in office, he added $10 trillion to the deficit through aggressive tax cuts and spending increases. If this time, he adds another $10-$15 trillion, the National Debt could reach $50 trillion by 2030.
There are two issues here. For a start, Trump will find it a lot harder and more expensive to fund a National Debt at $50 trillion than $20 trillion. Second, borrowing of this unprecedented magnitude, double US GDP, will send interest rates soaring, causing a recession.
The only question then is whether this will be a pandemic-style recession, which took stocks down 30% and recovered quickly, or a 2008 recession which demolished stocks by 52% and dragged on for years.
Hope for the best but expect the worst, unless you want to consider a future career as an Uber driver.
A Rocky Mountain Moose Family
2) Equities – (SPY), (QQQ), (IWM), (GS), (MS), (JPM), (BAC), (C), (BLK)
The outlook for stocks for 2025 is pretty simple. You are going to have to work twice as hard to make half the money you did last year with twice the volatility. You will not be able to be as nowhere near aggressive in 2025 as you were in 2024 It’s a dream scenario for somebody like me. For you, I’m not so sure.
It’s not that US companies aren't growing gangbusters. I expect 2% GDP growth, 15% profit growth, and 12% net margin growth in 2025. But let’s face reality. Stocks are the most expensive they have been in 17 years and we know what happened after 2008. Much of the stock market gain achieved last year was through hefty multiple expansions. This is not good.
Big tech companies might be able to deliver 20% gains and are still the lead sector for the market. Normally that should deliver you a 15%, or $800 gain in the S&P 500 (SPX). We might be able to capture this in the first half of 2025.
Financials will remain the sector with the best risk/reward, and I mean the broader definition of the term, including banks, brokers, money managers, and some small-cap regional banks. The reason is very simple. Their income statements will get juiced at both ends as revenues soar and costs plunge, thanks to deregulation.
No passage of new laws is required to achieve this, just a failure to enforce existing ones. The hint for this is a new SEC chair whose primary interest is promoting the Bitcoin bubble. Buy (GS), (MS), (JPM), (BAC), (C), and (BLK).
However, this is anything but a normal year. Uncertainty is at an eight-year high, thanks to an incoming administration. If the promised policies are delivered, inflation will soar and interest rates will rise, as they already have. We could lose half or all of our stock market gains by the end of 2025.
The big “tell” for this was the awful market performance in December, down 5%. The Dow Average was down ten days in a row for the first time in 70 years. Santa Claus was unceremoniously sent packing. People Are clearly nervous. But then they should be with a bull market that is approaching a decrepit five years in age.
There is a bullish scenario out there and that has Trump doing absolutely nothing in 2025, either because he is unwilling or unable to take action. After all, if the economy isn’t actually broken, why fix it? Better yet, if you own an economy it is better not to break it in the first place.
Nothing substantial can pass Congress with a minuscule one-seat majority in the House of Representatives. There will be no new presidential action through tariffs and only a few token, highly televised deportations, not enough to affect the labor market.
Stocks will not only hold, but they may add to the 15% first-half gains for the year. I give this scenario maybe a 50% probability.
The first indication this is happening is when the presidential characterization of the economy flips in a few months from the world’s worst to the world’s best with no actual change in the numbers. Trump will take all the credit.
You heard it here first.
Frozen Headwaters of the Colorado River
3) Bonds (TLT), (TBT), (JNK), (PHB), (HYG), (MUB), (LQD)
Amtrak needs to fill every seat in the dining car to get everyone fed on time, so you never know who you will share a table with for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
There was the Vietnam Vet Phantom Jet Pilot who now refused to fly because he was treated so badly at airports. A young couple desperately eloping from Omaha could only afford seats as far as Salt Lake City. After they sat up all night, I paid for their breakfast.
A retired British couple was circumnavigating the entire US in a month on a “See America Pass.” Mennonites returned home by train because their religion forbade travel by automobiles or airplanes.
The big question to ask here after a 100-basis point rise in bond yields in only three months is whether the (TLT) has suffered enough. The short answer is no, not quite yet, but we’re getting close. Fear of Trump policies should eventually take ten-year US Treasury bond yields to 5.00%, and then we will be ready for a pause at a nine-month bottom. After that, it depends on how history unfolds.
If Trump gets everything he wants, inflation will soar, bonds will crash, and 5.00% will be just a pit stop on the way to 6.00%, 7.00%, and who knows what? On the other hand, if Trump gets nothing he says he wants, then both bonds stocks and bonds will rise, creating a Goldilocks scenario for all balanced portfolios and investors.
That also sets up a sweet spot for entry into (TLT) call spreads close to 5.00% yields. A politician campaigning on one policy, then doing the opposite once elected? Stranger things have happened. The black swans will live.
A Visit to the 19th Century
4) Foreign Currencies (FXE), (EUO), (FXC), (FXA), (YCS), (FXY), (CYB)
If your basic assumption for interest rates is that they stay flat or rise, then you have to love the US dollar. Currencies are all about expected interest rate differentials and money always pours into the highest-paying ones. Tariffs will add fat to the fire because any reduction in international trade automatically reduces American trade deficits and is therefore pro-dollar.
This means that you should avoid all foreign currency plays like the plague, including the Euro (FXE), Japanese yen (FXY), British Pound (FXB), Canadian dollar (FXE), and Australian dollar (FXA).
A strong greenback comes with pluses and minuses. It makes our exports expensive and less competitive and therefore creates another drag on the economy. It demolishes traditional weak dollar plays like emerging markets and precious metals. On the other hand, it attracts substantial foreign investments into US stocks and bonds, which has been continuing for the past decade.
Above all, be happy you are paid in US dollars. My foreign clients are getting crushed in an increasingly expensive world.
5) Commodities (FCX), (BHP), (RIO), (VALE), (DBA)
Look at the chart of any commodity stock and you see grim death. Freeport McMoRan (FCX), BHP (BHP), and Rio Tinto (RIO), they’re all the same. They’re all afflicted with the same disease, over-dependence on a robustly growing China, which isn’t growing robustly, if at all.
I firmly believe that this will continue until the current leadership by President Xi Zheng Ping ends. He has spent the last decade globally expanding Chinese interests, engaging in abusive trade practices, hacking, and attacking American allies like Taiwan and the Philippines. You can only wave a red flag in front of the US before it comes back to bite you. A trade war with the US is now imminent.
This will happen sooner than later. The Chinese people don’t like being poor for very long. This is why I didn’t get sucked in on the Chinese long side in the fall, as many hedge funds did.
If China wants to go back to playing nice, as they did in the eighties and nineties, China should return to return to high growth and commodities will look like great “Buys” down here. If they don’t, American growth alone should eventually pull commodities up, as our economy is now growing at a long-term average gross unadjusted 6.00% rate. So the question is how long this takes.
It may pay to start nibbling on the best quality bombed-out names now, like those above.
Snow Angel on the Continental Divide
6) Energy (DIG), (USO), (DUG), (UNG), (USO), (XLE), (LNG), (CCJ), (VST), (SMR)
Energy was one of the worst-performing sectors in the market for the second year in a row and 2025 is looking no better. New supplies are surging, while demand remains stuck in the mud, with the US now producing an incredible 13.5 million barrels a day. OPEC is dead.
EVs now make up 10% of the US auto fleet, and much more in other countries, are making a big dent. Some 50% of all new car sales in China, the world’s largest market, are EVs. The number of barrels of oil needed to increase a unit of American GDP is plunging, as it has done for 25 years, through increased efficiencies. Remember your old Lincoln Continental that used to get eight miles per gallon? Now it gets 27.
Worse yet, a major black swan hovers over the sector. If the Ukraine War somehow ends, some ten million barrels a day of Russian oil will hit the market. Oil prices should plunge to $50 a barrel.
There are always exceptions to the rule, and energy plays not dependent on the price of oil would be a good one. So is natural gas, which will benefit from Cheniere Energy’s (LNG) third export terminal coming online, increasing exports to China. Ukraine cutting off Russian gas flowing to Europe will assure there is plenty of new demand.
But I prefer investing in sectors that have tailwinds and not headwinds. Better leave energy to the pros who have the inside information they need to make money here.
If someone is holding a gun to your head tell you that you MUST invest in energy, go for the new nuclear plays like (CCJ), (VST), and (SMR). We are only at the becoming of the small modular reactor trend, which could accelerate for decades.
7) Precious Metals (GLD), (DGP), (SLV), (PPTL), (PALL)
The train has added extra engines at Denver, so now we may begin the long laboring climb up the Eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains.
On a steep curve, we pass along an antiquated freight train of hopper cars filled with large boulders.
The porter tells me this train is welded to the tracks to create a windbreak. Once, a gust howled out of the pass so swiftly, that it blew a passenger train over on its side.
In the snow-filled canyons, we saw a family of three moose, a huge herd of elk, and another group of wild mustangs. The engineer informs us that a rare bald eagle is flying along the left side of the train. It’s a good omen for the coming year.
We also see countless abandoned 19th-century gold mines and the broken-down wooden trestles leading to huge piles of tailings, relics of previous precious metals booms. So, it is timely here to speak about the future of precious metals.
We certainly got a terrific run on precious metals in 2025, with gold at its highs up 33% and silver up 65%. The miners did even better. Even after the post-election selloff, it was still one of the best-performing asset classes of the year.
But the heat has definitely gone out of this trade. The prospect of higher interest rates for longer in 2025 has sent short-term traders elsewhere. That’s because the opportunity cost of owning precious metals is rising since they pay no interest rates or dividends. And let’s face it, there was definitely new competition for hot money from crypto, which doubled after the election.
The sector is not dead, it is resting. Central bank buying of the barbarous relic continues unabated, especially among sanctioned countries, like Russia and China. Gold is still the principal savings vehicle for many Chinese. They are not going to recover confidence in their own currency, banks, or government anytime soon. And there is still slow but steadily rising industrial demand from solar sectors.
Gold supply has also been falling for years, while costs are rising at least at double the headline inflation rate. So it’s just a matter of time before the supply/demand balance comes back in our favor. Where the final bottom is anyone’s guess as gold lacks the traditional valuation parameters of other asset classes, like dividends or interest paid. We’ll just have to wait for Mr. Market to tell us, who is always right.
Give (GLD), (SLV), (GDX), (GOLD), and (WPM) a rest for now but I’ll be back.
Crossing the Great Nevada Desert Near Area 51
8) Real Estate (ITB), (LEN), (KBH), (PHM), (DHI)
The majestic snow-covered Rocky Mountains are behind me. There is now a paucity of scenery, with the endless ocean of sagebrush and salt flats of Northern Nevada outside my window, so there is nothing else to do but write.
My apologies in advance to readers in Wells, Elko, Battle Mountain, and Winnemucca, Nevada.
It is a route long traversed by roving bands of Indians, itinerant fur traders, the Pony Express, my own immigrant forebearers in wagon trains, the Transcontinental Railroad, the Lincoln Highway, and finally US Interstate 80, which was built for the 1960 Winter Olympics at Squaw Valley, California.
Passing by shantytowns and the forlorn communities of the high desert, I am prompted to comment on the state of the US real estate market.
Real estate was a nice earner for us in 2024 in the new homes sector. The election promptly demolished this trade with the prospect of higher interest rates for longer. Expect this unwelcome drag to continue in 2025.
I am not expecting a housing crash unless interest rates take off. More likely it will continue to grind sideways on low volume. That’s because the market has support from a structural shortage of 10 million homes in the US, the debris left over from the 2008 housing crash. That’s why there is still a Millennial living in your basement. Homebuilders now prioritize profit margins over market share.
I expect this sector to come back someday. New homebuilders have the advantage of offering free upgrades and discounted in-house financing. Avoid for now (DHI), (KBH), (TOL), and (PHM).
Crossing the Bridge to Home Sweet Home
9) Postscript
We have pulled into the station at Truckee amid a howling blizzard.
My loyal staff have made the ten-mile trek from my estate at Incline Village to welcome me to California with a couple of hot breakfast burritos and a chilled bottle of Dom Perignon Champagne, which has been cooling in a nearby snowbank. I am thankfully spared from taking my last meal with Amtrak.
After that, it was over legendary Donner Pass, and then all downhill from the Sierras, across the Central Valley, and into the Sacramento River Delta.
Well, that’s all for now. We’ve just passed what was left of the Pacific mothball fleet moored near the Benicia Bridge (2,000 ships down to six in 80 years). The pressure increase caused by a 7,200-foot descent from Donner Pass has crushed my plastic water bottle. Nice science experiment!
The Golden Gate Bridge and the soaring spire of Salesforce Tower are just coming into view across San Francisco Bay.
A storm has blown through, leaving the air crystal clear and the bay as flat as glass. It is time for me to unplug my MacBook Pro, iPad, and iPhone, pick up my various adapters, and pack up.
We arrive in Emeryville 45 minutes early. With any luck, I can squeeze in a ten-mile night hike up Grizzly Peak tonight and still get home in time to watch the ball drop in New York’s Times Square on TV.
I reach the ridge just in time to catch a spectacular pastel sunset over the Pacific Ocean. The omens are there. It is going to be another good year.
I’ll shoot you a Trade Alert whenever I see a window open at a sweet spot on any of the dozens of trades described above, which should be soon.
Good luck and good trading in 2025!
John Thomas
The Mad Hedge Fund Trader
The Omens Are Good for 2025!
Mad Hedge Biotech and Healthcare Letter
January 7, 2025
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(CELLS OF THE CENTURY)
(LCTX), (ATHX)
If you'd told me a decade ago that I'd be writing about hundred-year-olds' blood cells holding the secret to eternal youth, I would've thought you'd been reading too much science fiction.
Yet here I am, staring at data from a revolutionary new stem cell bank that's making immortality hunters drool and investors' wallets itch.
But let’s ground this exciting idea in the real world for a moment.
Let me back up a bit. Last week, while having dinner with a biotech analyst friend – let's call her Sarah – she couldn't stop talking about a groundbreaking new collection of stem cells derived from centenarians.
These remarkable individuals have done more than just reach triple digits – they've managed to dodge the usual buffet of age-related diseases that claim most of us long before we hit 100. But what makes this discovery particularly intriguing for us is how it bridges cutting-edge science with immediate market potential.
"These people aren't just old," Sarah explained, jabbing her fork at me for emphasis, "they're biologically younger than their birth certificates suggest." The data backs her up – these super-agers are clocking in at an average of 6.55 years younger than their chronological age. It's like finding a 1960 Corvette with the engine of a 2017 model.
And this biological time warp isn't just a scientific curiosity – it's becoming a goldmine for biotechnology companies looking to unlock the secrets of healthy aging.
Scientists can now take these centenarians' blood cells and reprogram them into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), creating a renewable source of cellular youth. Think of it as cellular time travel – these cells can become virtually any type of cell in the body, from heart muscle to brain neurons.
This versatility is precisely why the global stem cell therapy market has swelled to $11.8 billion and is projected to reach $31 billion by 2032.
Still, the field isn't without its volatility – funding swings from $1.2 billion in late 2022 to $233 million in early 2023 show just how quickly investor sentiment can shift in this space.
The investment landscape here is particularly fascinating because it spans both established players and innovative upstarts. Lineage Cell Therapeutics (LCTX) is targeting neurodegenerative diseases with cell-based therapies, while Athersys (ATHXQ) pushes forward with its MultiStem technology.
These companies are betting big on cellular solutions to age-related diseases, though we should watch trial results as carefully as they monitor their retirement accounts.
What sets these centenarian-derived cells apart is their unique genetic profile. Their immune cells show shifts and genetic variants that seem to protect against diseases that usually send most of us to the great beyond decades earlier.
Some male centenarians even show mosaic loss of the Y chromosome – a genetic quirk that might contribute to their longevity. This isn't just fascinating biology. It's practically a roadmap for developing new therapeutics.
The real game-changer is how these cells can serve as "disease-in-a-dish" models. Want to study Alzheimer's? Transform these cells into neurons. Curious about heart disease? Make some cardiac cells.
This capability is revolutionizing drug development, allowing companies to test new treatments more efficiently and potentially reduce the astronomical costs of bringing new drugs to market.
For those eyeing this space, the demographic trends are compelling. The world's population isn't getting any younger, and healthcare systems are groaning under the weight of age-related diseases.
That means companies that can leverage these iPSC lines for drug screening or biomarker development might strike it rich before anyone finds the fountain of youth.
The open-source nature of this iPSC resource is accelerating progress across the entire field. Like the early days of Linux, it's not about one company holding all the cards, but rather a collaborative rush toward breakthroughs.
This shared knowledge base is already helping researchers validate findings and refine therapeutic strategies, potentially shortening the timeline from discovery to approved treatment.
Looking ahead, we're set to watch as cellular biology and big data converge in ways we never imagined. So, the question now isn't if this field will transform medicine, but when – and more importantly for us, who will lead the charge.
Just remember, in biotech as in life, patience isn't just a virtue – it's a necessity. These breakthroughs move at their own pace, usually somewhere between "glacial" and "watched pot never boils." But when they hit? Well, that's when fortunes are made and medical textbooks are rewritten.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to check on my portfolio of longevity stocks. After all, I'm planning to live long enough to see how this all plays out – and maybe even long enough to benefit from these breakthrough treatments myself.
