FBI Raids, Nvidia Stalling, and Crypto Blues
193: Markets and Geopolitics Update for June
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Today’s going to be more or less an outline of all the things that should be on your radar as we enter summer.
From the true state of the jobs market (which looks horrific) to election predictions ahead of the presidential debate, to financial markets and crypto predictions — we will touch on all of it today.
Bottom line — it’s quiet. Too Quiet.
From a markets perspective — things continue to get more and more wonky. NVDA 0.00%↑ leads the pack with it’s continued gains, while other stocks in the S&P and Nasdaq seem to be in a weird holding pattern. From a weighting standpoint it’s a bit bizzare — as only a handful of stocks are really continuing to rally amid the questionable economic outlook around the world.
From a political standpoint I think many people are waiting with bated breath to see what happens next — most people can sense something big is likely coming, but they still fail to put their finger on exactly what it could be (we will talk through those scenarios today).
Even those who don’t like to get political can sense the vibe shift — everything feels a bit less secure. Houses are unobtainable for a large percentage of the population, costs are not coming down, salaries and roles are being outsourced or cut entirely, and society seems to be getting less stable.
Despite valiant attempts from the establishment and propoganda arms of the world to say otherwise “officially” — crime is most definitely not going down. Any person you talk to who is objective will tell you they’re aware of multiple incidents in any given week. More on that shortly.
It’s beyond evident at this point that the Federal Reserve and Biden Administration are fudging job and employment numbers for optics — and it’s even more obvious that the Fed doesn’t really know what to do next.
Economy
Things are peculiar in equity markets as we watch a very select basket of stocks doing all the pumping and leg work. Things could be worse though — you could have Cathie Wood’s wikipedia page.
The Kobeissi Letter did a great job explaining the facts today on twitter — the S&P 500 Equal Weight index relative to the S&P 500 is now at its lowest level since the 2008 Financial Crisis that wreaked havoc on the US.
This ratio has accelerated as the S&P 500 has rallied by 14% year-to-date while the equal-weight by just 5%. The disconnect has been driven by the 5 largest stocks which have seen a 32% gain combined this year (Kobeissi Letter).'
As of today NVDA is showing weakness and it’s bringing down other big names — my YOLO option play for the fall with SWBI 0.00%↑ is in shambles, despite decent earnings the stock is down 10% — but…… I am adding it.
The Japanese Yen is on track for its lowest close against the U.S. Dollar in nearly 34 years
Mortgage rates in the US have dropped for a third consecutive week, falling to 6.87%, the lowest level since early April, per Bloomberg (Unusual Whales/Bloomberg)
The number of U.S. companies going bankrupt has now hit a 14-year high (Associated Press)
The top 10 stocks in the S&P 500 now make up a record-high 35% of the index, per Apollo's Torsten Slok (Unusual Whales)
Crypto
Crypto has been on a slow bleed creating a good amount of fresh bag-holders who got a bit carried away with their meme coin allocations and celebrity token buys.
Overall I think this is just a shakeout, though nobody should be surprised if we leg lower before the end of summer/fall. Would be a great chance to pick up some assets you’ve been eyeing.
Infamous ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli claims he and Barron Trump have created a DJT crypto token, crypto twitter erupted into drama including a purported $100M bet by infamous trader GCR which he later retracted
Gemini crypto exchange founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss donated 30.94 Bitcoin worth $2 million to Donald Trump to "put an end to the Biden Administration's war on crypto." (Watcher Guru)
There’s never a dull moment in crypto and this week is no exception. We found out on Wednesday that the German Government is one of the culprits in large sales of Bitcoin recently, offloading nearly 47,179 $BTC ($3.06B). Perhaps the only reason we haven’t dipped below $60,000 is that size lord Michael Saylor of Microstrategy announced another large buy of 11,900 more Bitcoin.
Sentiment on crypto Twitter is mixed at the moment due to the weakness of alts, the dumping of several meme coins, and the inverse correlation to equity strength.
Most seem to think if equities end up dumping hard soon crypto will have another leg down, and it’s honestly hard to come up with a good counter argument to that outcome.
I remain bullish through the end of the year and expect Ethereum to show strength into the launch of ETFs. Bitcoin could be unpredictable and we should look to the upcoming presidential debate to see if any clues are given on how candidates will treat crypto.
In some interesting news CEO of Dell, Michael Dell, posted an image of a cookie monster eating Bitcoins on Twitter. Dell is the majority shareholder owning 58.9% of the stock. It begs the question — is Dell going to replicate the Microstrategy approach and begin purchasing Bitcoin? Dell is sitting on nearly $6 billion in cash. This could create a domino effect of corporate buys if we do in fact get confirmation that Dell is dabbling in Bitcoin.
Worth Watching.
Crime & Security Concerns
At this point — pretty safe to say I am utterly disgusted at the gaslighting and lies surrounding crime in the US and the West. In one of my last posts I detailed the obvious reasons why the “far right” is gaining traction around the world. Of course we know that it’s not REALLY far right — it’s just normal people who stand against abusive leftist/globalist leaders.
Before lapping up the government propaganda we are being fed about crime rates being low consider the following fact.
32% of all police agencies in the US did not report crime statistics in 2022. The data you are being swayed with is not accurate.
In the last 2 months:
2 migrants were charged with abducting and strangling a Texas girl who was 12 and then dumping her body in bayou
A 19-year-old student was arrested after a deadly stabbing at USC's Greek Row on Monday night in what police described as a confrontation between a witness and a man breaking into cars (NBCLA).
Mexican cartels are now reportedly offering VIP “travel agency” packages worth as much as $15,000 to help illegal immigrants sneak into the United States via a stream of underground tunnels (NYPost)
Ramzan Daraev, 35, was shot to death on the evening of May 3 during an altercation with an unnamed U.S. military service person on the outskirts of Carthage, a city in North Carolina located an hour away from Fort Liberty, one of the largest U.S. military bases (Voa News)
We’re deep into our Bolshevik/Stalinist rule of the law in the US in which the victim is actually the one who ends up being persecuted, charged or, jailed, just as we saw with Daniel Penny on the New York subway.
Take a moment to digest the language used in the next sentence when talking about a student who was confronting a criminal breaking into cars — "The male victim was breaking into vehicles at the location when the suspect confronted and stabbed the victim," the LAPD said Tuesday. The one breaking the law is the “victim”.
It’s actually unbelievable at this point.
In stark contrast to regime media and establishment narratives of low crime an Ecuadorian man raped a 13-year-old girl at knifepoint in a Queens park this week during broad daylight after tying her up and brandishing a machete. This comes after developments related to the suspected Salvadoran gang member accused of raping and killing a Maryland mom in 2023. We now know he illegally snuck into the US three times in two months.
Out of all the topics I cover this had got to be the most frustrating — that people continue to support political parties and politicians who do nothing to stop this madness within Western countries. How many rapes and murders have to happen before people do something? Why are we insisting on charging people who defend themselves and their property from pieces of sh*t?
It’s completely ass backwards and has zero logic applied to it.
But that’s not the only concerning trend to emerge from our complete lack of vetting of the people walking into our country under the current administration’s border policy.
Terror Note
I’m going to formerly note a concern of mine today on the security front and I really urge people to take it seriously.
One of the major risks I point out frequently as we approach the election in the fall is a terror attack on US soil. Due to increased illegal immigration, global conflicts around the world, and anti American sentiment this threat is becoming more and more likely.
Experts agree — the threat of a major terror event taking place on U.S. soil is at a dangerously high level with big cities like New York City and Washington, D.C. most vulnerable to an attack, terror experts are warning (NYPost).
“We are in a period where a number of factors are combining to make a terrorist attack on the homeland far more likely than it perhaps had been”
—Paul Mauro, a retired NYPD inspector who worked in counterterrorism for nearly 15 years.
This isn’t fear mongering or alarmism — it’s deduction through evidence and pattern recognition and while it might be unsettling or uncomfortable to think about I want there to be a record of me touching on it, because at this point I see it as being inevitable and highly likely.
My expectation is that the US and potentially other Western nations) will see a large scale disruptive event in the next 6 months — specifically a terror attack or violent event. We can see the anecdotal evidence each and every day of crimes being committed by illegal aliens who are criminals — there’s literally 2 or 3 each week at this point.
Not all of these people are bad — and while that shouldn’t have to be said, there’s still a large contingent of people who seem to think that there’s no issue with letting in millions of unvetted people.
But what people need to realize is that these instances referenced above, which are plentiful, are simply criminals — for the most part these are not trained or organized hostile actors. The scary thing is that the latter absolutely exists all across the US and other nations.
It’s a fact that we now have hostile organizations and individuals within our country from a whole host of countries that are unfriendly to the United States.
The FBI broke up an ISIS plot last month, the Delta Force operator caught two Chechen spies in his front yard in NC earlier this year, and amid continued warnings from officials in the government we also came to find out that NYPD uniforms and car decals have gone missing in the last two weeks. The list of cyber related prodding and attacks is exhaustive at this point and it’s impacting everything in this country from water facilities to hospitals.
These are red flags you should be paying attention to.
While there are endless possibilities of what this could look like let’s consider for a moment that we were hit with an October 7th style attack INSIDE the US and we can use the missing NYPD uniforms intel. All it takes is a small group of military aged men with rifles to cause a substantial state of fear and panic within our country. Imagine if shooting broke out in Midtown Manhattan, you’re scrambling to find cover and see some NYPD officers running towards you.
You reasonably assume they can help and run to them — but it turns out it’s several Jihadi or Russian operators who dressed up as officers as a part of a larger plot. The real NYPD officers are slow to put down the threat — after all none of them expected hostile actors to be dressed in NYPD uniforms. This might seem far fetched but it’s really not. These are text book methods for subversion, causing confusion and panic, and inflicting mass casualties.
Pair a cyber disruption with a terror attack and you completely paralyze and disrupt society.
How many suburban dads or city dwelling apartment folks are prepared for violence and chaos erupting in their neighborhood?
Mix in the social unrest and protests we are bound to see coming ahead of the election and you have a true cluster on the horizon. Bad actors, terrorists, or foreign agents have the perfect playground to plot acts of disruption. The majority of Americans and global citizens are not in the frame of mind to react to an event inside their own country.
But rest assured — they are here and they are plotting. Who knows when they might be activated or when they are planning something but all of us would do well to acknowledge that this threat level is high.
Motivations of such an attack are plentiful — in the aftermath of such an attack public support could be rallied for a new war, new encroachments on liberty (like gun grabbing for “public safety”), or even a delayed election. These are government incentives associated with such an event — our enemies stand to gain moral support, a strategic victory, and a blow to the US population if they can pull off an attack.
Ask yourself this — if you were China, Russia, or a terror group and the US was foolish enough to let several dozen (highly conservative) of your operators or agents into the US would you pass up the chance to strike at the heartland and cause mass damage and chaos?
I wouldn’t. In fact with the current state of US society, it could be the tipping point to send your rival country into a death spiral.
Election & US Politics
We’ll be putting out a special drinking game for the US Presidential debate on at 9 p.m. ET on June 27 via CNN (of course). It should be highly entertaining and I am looking forward to a good evening of laughs.
With CNN moderating don’t be surprised if Trump’s mic is cut off at certain points or Biden gets soft ball questions. Anyone with a pulse knows this is going to be a slaughter fest and that Biden will be on an insane cocktail of amphetamines to stay lucid.
It will be 90 minutes long and include two commercial breaks.
The guide will come out next Friday. In other news:
The FBI conducted a raid on Democrat Oakland, California, Mayor Sheng Thao, after the recent announcement of her recall election coming in November.
Democrat election officials in Burlington, Vermont, have been sued by an election integrity group for allowing non-citizens to vote in elections.
On a recent Project Veritas video — Biden's State Department Official admits that the Great Replacement is real stating: ‘They Want to Change the Demographics of the United States’. “Traditional, standard Americans are not leftists. Latin Americans are all leftists. This is just to try and change the demographics [of the United States]." - U.S. Consular Officer
The Supreme Court upholds federal gun ban for those under domestic violence restraining orders
Reform UK received nearly 2.5 times more donations than the Tories in the second week of the election
At this point — anecdotally I am seeing a big surge in Trump support. The Winklevoss Twins, Bill Ackman, and other traditionally left leaning figures are publicly expressing Trump is their preferred choice in 2024. It will be interesting to see what comes of the trial and if Biden actually ends up being the candidate — I am still not ruling out a late entry by Gavin Newsom.
You can tell that instances of Biden’s gaffes and old age are getting more and more coverage in the media.
Even left leaning outlets like the NY Times or The Economist are struggling to obfuscate the clear lead that Trump has right now.
It’s anyone’s guess what comes in November — but one things for sure, it is not going to be a smooth ride and regardless of the outcome you are going to have millions of pissed off people.
Enjoy the weekend and warm weather — I will be back next week with an online business update as well as the pre debate post that should make the event even more entertaining.
See you guys next week!
Disclaimer - I am a former trader, enterprise sales rep, and current entrepreneur. Nothing I say should be considered formal financial advice - always do your own research and diligence before investing and ensure you have a good understanding of your personal risk tolerance.
It is peculiar that Ecuador revoked the open door policy for Chinese immigrants headed to the US border this week. Any concerns that a DEM DOJ could target Gemini now or with a win in the fall?