Independent thinking for complex markets and current events
On Tuesday, April 14, at the HSBC Global Investment Summit in Hong Kong, CEO Georges Elhedery said something on live Bloomberg television that should have detonated every energy desk on earth. It did not. Because nobody is reading what it actually means. “The highest I’ve seen, and I’m hoping we don’t see more of that, …
Air Canada ordered to pay pilots who were denied religious covid vaccine exemption An arbitrator has ordered Air Canada to grant back pay to seven pilots denied religious exemptions from the airline’s mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy in a violation of the Canadian Human Rights Act. In a case of workplace religious discrimination, Air Canada placed …
Cracks in the US private credit market are widening: Investors requested a record -$14.0 billion in redemptions from private credit funds in Q1 2026. This is up +146% from -$5.7 billion in Q4 2025 and +278% higher than the -$3.7 billion in the full year 2024. Meanwhile, just… pic.twitter.com/wBJ3bUSW1X — The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) April …
Acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Todd Lyons has been hospitalized at least twice for stress-related issues as he has carried out President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration agenda — strain that has caused him to struggle to make key decisions for the agency, according to two current and two former administration officials. The hospitalizations …
Originally published on my Substack. Fertilizer is getting stuck in transit, with shipments piling up on the wrong side of the Strait of Hormuz and plants in India, Algeria, and Slovakia shutting down or slowing while China restricts exports. Australian wheat farmers are planting less. U.S. corn and soy farmers are asking President Trump for …
Something big is building. Oil is surging toward $91 per barrel as the war around Iran widens and traders start pricing in real disruption. The world runs on oil. A huge share of it passes through one narrow waterway. The Strait of Hormuz moves roughly 20% of global oil supply every day. Twenty percent. That …
Nearly half of Americans in a new WalletHub survey said their household can’t manage more debt, while more than one-third said they expect to have higher balances by the end of 2026. Fifty-three percent of households said the struggle the most with credit card debt, followed by mortgages at 20% and student loans with 11%. …
Bull Theory @BullTheoryio 🚨THE $2 TRILLION PRIVATE CREDIT MARKET COULD BE FACING ITS FIRST MAJOR BANKRUPTCY. Blue Owl manages about $273 billion in assets. It is one of the biggest lenders behind the AI data center buildout. When companies like Meta, CoreWeave, or Crusoe need billions to build large data center campuses, they often go …
Crypto Rover @cryptorover 🚨BIG WARNING: THE FIRST MAJOR DOMINO HAS FALLEN. Today, Blue Owl Capital announced that it permanently halted redemptions for Blue Owl Capital Corp II (OBDC II), its $1.7 billion private credit fund aimed at retail investors. And this is not a small thing. Blue Owl Capital is a major alternative asset manager …
by Peter Reagan One of the advantages of watching the economy for decades isn’t clairvoyance. It’s pattern recognition. If you’ve ever cooked pancakes long enough, you know when one is about to burn – not because you can see the future, but because you’ve seen the signs before. The bubbles change. The smell shifts. The …
Lawsuits do not mean guilt, but they do mean someone thinks the books were dressed up while risk was buried. If AI demand slows or financing tightens, this kind of leverage does not unwind politely. They will tell you, "We never saw it coming." pic.twitter.com/eoUhPP387V — The Great Martis (@great_martis) February 4, 2026 “When you …
via Mike Maharrey Consumer borrowing cratered further in November, likely reflecting growing consumer stress, as price inflation persists and credit cards become maxed out. That’s bad news for a U.S. economy that depends on consumers buying stuff. Persistent price inflation forced Americans to blow through their savings and then turn to credit cards to make …
Gold’s move toward $4,600 isn’t about jobs data or geopolitics – it’s about currency stress. Silver’s tightening supply tells the same story, while Venezuela’s gold dispute shows why central banks demand physical metal stored close to home… By Peter Reagan Your News to Know rounds up the most important developments in precious metals and the …
Absurd that there is funding stress from such a small amount of quantitative tightening. It’s already over, and we are still well above 2019 balance sheet levels. Shows you how broken the market has become. pic.twitter.com/TaxwfBBtYj — Illiquid Insights (@IlliquidInsight) December 16, 2025 🚨FEDERAL RESERVE INJECTS $5.2 BILLION INTO U.S. BANKING SYSTEM VIA OVERNIGHT REPOS …
THE THERMODYNAMIC RECKONING Oracle just lost $35 billion in market cap. In 48 hours. Wall Street thinks this is an earnings miss. It is not. This is the first domino. What happened on December 11 was not a revenue shortfall. It was a confession. Oracle revealed 57 percent of its $523 billion backlog depends on …
Only very large institutions can tap the overnight repo window at that scale. That means a major bank or a primary dealer needed the money. A regular hedge fund cannot walk in and take $25 billion overnight on top of $50 billion last week. That kind of access and size belongs to big banks that …
JAPAN’S 2-YEAR YIELD HITS 1% FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 2008, AND THE YEN CARRY TRADE JUST CRUMBLED OVERNIGHT. Stocks and Bitcoin mass liquidations return. pic.twitter.com/Uf3vxIsoRy — Jesse Cohen (@JesseCohenInv) December 1, 2025 Japan’s bond market sent a clear signal this week. The country’s two-year government bond yield touched 1%. Its highest level since 2008. …
“US market liquidity STRESS is surging again: Banks’ demand for the Fed’s Standing Repo Facility (SRF) hit $14 BILLION this morning, and $11 BILLION on Tuesday, the highest since October, signaling rising pressures inside the short-term funding system. As a reminder, the SRF lets banks to borrow CASH directly from the Fed by pledging US …
Repo-pocalypse: Banks Are Quietly Borrowing from the Fed Again Like It’s 2020 The Fed injected $125 billion into the banking system in just five days — its largest short-term cash rescue since the 2020 crisis. Banks are tapping the Fed’s repo window at pandemic-era levels, a signal that liquidity may be thinning faster than expected. …
by Mike Maharrey After barely rising in August, consumer debt grew modestly in September, likely reflecting growing debt stress on American households. The U.S. economy depends on consumers buying stuff. Persistent price inflation forced Americans to blow through their savings and then turn to credit cards to make ends meet. Credit card spending has slowed …
by Mike Maharrey After unexpectedly surging in July, consumer debt returned to its previous trend and flatlined again in August, signaling growing financial stress on American households. The growth of revolving debt, primarily reflecting credit card debt, has been slowing all year. It contracted in May and June, after a one-off surge in April, before …
by confoundedinterest17 The Fed will have to whip it good with rate cuts if the recession warnings are an indicator of what lies ahead for the US economy. The ratio of The Conference Board’s Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) vs. The Conference Board’s Coincident Economic Index (CEI) ratio hasn’t been this low since 2008. Fed Funds Futures are …
In July 2025, 71 large US companies filed for bankruptcy. That is the highest monthly total since the pandemic lockdown peak in 2020. June saw 66 filings, and May had 64. Source: https://x.com/KobeissiLetter/status/1955262243320541630 The year-to-date total now stands at 446 bankruptcies, already surpassing full-year totals for 2021, which had 405, and 2022 with 373. This …
What’s going on here is likely a sign of rising global stress. The sharp drop in the 10 year Treasury yield alongside a spike in the U.S. Dollar Index (DXY) points to a flight to safety and a scramble for dollar liquidity. Normally, falling yields would weaken the dollar but when both move in opposite …
The pizza business is a great way to measure the real economy because it shows us what real people can afford and cannot afford or are choosing to spend their money on right now. And it’s a huge indicator of where the economy is headed. Pizza sales across the board both takeout and delivery and …
The U.S. economy is showing signs of strain that official headlines aren’t capturing. Despite stock market gains, underlying indicators suggest a slowdown. Labor market indicators are weakening. Initial jobless claims for the week ending June 28, 2025, were 227,980, a slight decrease from the previous week. However, continuing claims increased to 1,974,000, up from 1,937,000 …
Jamaal Bowman says that "the stress of being called the N-word" is why blacks suffer from obesity, cancer, etc pic.twitter.com/Jm85FzPfDD — End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) June 26, 2025
Moody’s Chief Economist Mark Zandi is warning that hard economic data is beginning to show clear signs of financial stress. The numbers are revealing weaknesses across multiple sectors, raising concerns about the stability of the economy. This is not just a theoretical concern. Businesses, consumers, and markets are feeling the pressure. Consumer spending is losing …
by Michael When you don’t have enough money to pay the bills, it can make for a lot of sleepless nights. If you are in that position right now, I want you to know that you are definitely not alone. I have heard from so many people that are being absolutely crushed by our ongoing …
