The Degenerate Economy - Endless Liquidity for Your Stupidity... and a Deglobalization Update

Good afternoon…

I took a rare week off from writing as I drove around Florida on a work/play tour. Im on way to frigid New York to work for the next week.

I was mostly offline in Florida and happily find it easier and easier to live app free and disconnected (other than utility apps and Stocktwits). I really had fun in Florida.

The internet mood is foul and I refuse to keep investing my time in curation when the tech overlords just continue to rug pull me and my work. I am happy to skim Sunday newspaper headlines and my newsletter lists with my time/attention. Consumer confidence is at historic lows but that could easily be that people are addicted to their social apps which drive misinformation, hate and misery. The corruption at the top and the endless enablers around Trump are going to push us towards the terrible policy of the lunatic left. The markets have been climbing this wall of misery, hate and worry, but at some point this hate, misery and worry will spill over into spending, the markets and volatility spikes.

As little as I have been connected to the news and the world, I have been following the markets closely and the two trends I care about most …the degenerate economy and deglobalization remain in full force.

Last year I started taking the deglobalization theme seriously. My friend Lewis Johnson came on the podcast last March and we chatted at length about how he sees it. It has played out very well for him and those that listened. I spent the day with him fishing last week in Naples and he is just as bullish as last year even after his heady gains.

While both trends are still in full force a year later, people are massively underinvested (time, money, energy) in the deglobalization trend and overinvested (time, money, energy) in degeneracy.

I know this because I track the degenerate economy with my own stock picks and index which is struggling to make headway after 3 years of insane growth and returns. If only I had swapped Bitcoin for Gold and European Defense Stocks for $AXON …

I call this phase of the degeneracy cycle ‘endless liquidity for your stupidity’. There is just too much supply of bets, options and products. The ‘stupid’ people are in abundance for now. The degenerate economy will not fade away but the poster children for degeneracy, Bitcoin, Robinhood, Coinbase, Uber, Doordash and Affirm ( $HOOD ( ▼ 2.63% )  $COIN ( ▼ 5.64% )  $AFRM ( ▼ 4.84% )  $DASH ( ▲ 0.68% ) )that have had nothing but good news and ‘growthy’ announcements and attention, only to see values drop 30 to 40 percent from their highs.

For the deglobalization trend, there is an opposite problem…not enough supply of companies and products to satiate the demand from investors that have figured this out. So, prices are spiking. You see it in gold, silver, european defense stocks, uranium, nuclear companies and oil stocks. Lewis believes this will soon spread to oil prices (the commodity), steel and other strategic supply chain areas as people and countries react to the deglobalization trend/theme. I will have him on the podcast again soon.

Have a good one.