WATCH DEBT

“The rise of direct lending is one of the most important developments in the financial world since the Global Financial Crisis.”

“The change in the interest rate environment has transformed the returns available to credit investors from meager to attractive.”

“When there's too much capital chasing too few deals, the quality of those deals and their terms usually suffer.”

“The success of direct lending is now inextricably linked to the success of the private equity industry.”

“Private credit has moved from a niche sub-asset class to a major, permanent part of the investment landscape.”

“Ticker HTZ is Hertz Global... It emerged from bankruptcy in June of 2021 and it's still carrying some pretty hefty leverage, $15.8 billion in long-term debt, negative free cashflow that is projected to be positive next year. In spite of that, it's still projected to lose money. It has not made money since December of 2023. Bottom line is they are executing a genuine operating turnaround, but at the same time, there are still some structural weaknesses in this company that could lead you to say, okay, high risk, high reward. It's certainly not for the faint of heart.”

“Wholesale prices rose sharply in the latest report, pointing to persistent inflation that could complicate Federal Reserve policy decisions. This unexpected uptick in producer prices suggests that inflation, well, the fight is far from over, despite the earlier optimism about cooling pricing pressures. The bond market is trying to balance safe-haven demand against persistent inflation concerns from energy price spikes.”

“The oil story intensified dramatically. Crude oil surged over 12%, its best session since 2020 and closed above $90 a barrel, up 36% on the week. Cutter warned that all Gulf producers may have to shut down production within days, a scenario that could drive oil to $150. Kuwait has reportedly already started cutting production.”

“February non-farm payrolls came in at negative $92,000, an outright decline, completely upending the labor market stabilization theme and better growth sentiment from the ISM prints that we saw earlier this week. Prior months, in fact, were revised down another $69,000. With that, the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4% and the participation rate dropped half a point to 62%.”

“Ball Corporation is the world's largest aluminum beverage can manufacturer. It also produces aluminum containers for personal care and household products. It is more than anything a pure play aluminum packaging name after a history of also being in the aerospace defense industry. But that sold off in February of 2024. What you're seeing is, well, big volume catalysts, sporting events, historically drive meaningful can volume.”

“They are stating that the AI-fueled stock market bubble is going to burst starting right now in 2026. Their thesis is that starting in 2026, those spectacular gains are going to unwind precipitously because rising interest rates and a higher, stickier inflation rate will essentially act as gravity on these sky-high equity valuations.”

“When you buy a tech stock at a massive premium, you're basically buying the promise of huge profits 10 or 15 years in the future. But if interest rates are high today, the mathematical value of those future profits shrinks drastically. When Capital Economics says inflation is sticky, they are saying the easy money era is over, which means the justification for these astronomical tech valuations evaporates.”

“Bridgewater Associates has executed a massive portfolio pivot that completely contradicts the mainstream narrative. We are talking about cutting their holdings in Meta by over 46 percent, alphabet position by 40 percent, and they even cut Microsoft by 10 percent. These are the companies that completely defined the 2024 and 2025 bull run.”

“The core issue they are pointing to is the infrastructure cost. If the cost of building out the servers, the power grids and the massive data centers for AI outpaces the actual dollars and cents it generates in revenue, the math simply stops working. It becomes a black hole for capital.”

“Private equity firms are lending billions of dollars to AI start-ups entirely outside the purview of traditional banking regulators. If one major AI start-up defaults on that private debt because their models don't generate the promised revenue, the contagion in that unregulated debt market could be incredibly rapid and entirely opaque until it is far too late.”

“They are stating that the AI-fueled stock market bubble is going to burst starting right now in 2026. Their thesis is that starting in 2026, those spectacular gains are going to unwind precipitously because rising interest rates and a higher, stickier inflation rate will essentially act as gravity on these sky-high equity valuations.”

“When you buy a tech stock at a massive premium, you're basically buying the promise of huge profits 10 or 15 years in the future. But if interest rates are high today, the mathematical value of those future profits shrinks drastically. When Capital Economics says inflation is sticky, they are saying the easy money era is over, which means the justification for these astronomical tech valuations evaporates.”

“Bridgewater Associates has executed a massive portfolio pivot that completely contradicts the mainstream narrative. We are talking about cutting their holdings in Meta by over 46 percent, alphabet position by 40 percent, and they even cut Microsoft by 10 percent. These are the companies that completely defined the 2024 and 2025 bull run.”

“The core issue they are pointing to is the infrastructure cost. If the cost of building out the servers, the power grids and the massive data centers for AI outpaces the actual dollars and cents it generates in revenue, the math simply stops working. It becomes a black hole for capital.”

“Private equity firms are lending billions of dollars to AI start-ups entirely outside the purview of traditional banking regulators. If one major AI start-up defaults on that private debt because their models don't generate the promised revenue, the contagion in that unregulated debt market could be incredibly rapid and entirely opaque until it is far too late.”

“They are stating that the AI-fueled stock market bubble is going to burst starting right now in 2026. Their thesis is that starting in 2026, those spectacular gains are going to unwind precipitously because rising interest rates and a higher, stickier inflation rate will essentially act as gravity on these sky-high equity valuations.”

“When you buy a tech stock at a massive premium, you're basically buying the promise of huge profits 10 or 15 years in the future. But if interest rates are high today, the mathematical value of those future profits shrinks drastically. When Capital Economics says inflation is sticky, they are saying the easy money era is over, which means the justification for these astronomical tech valuations evaporates.”

“Bridgewater Associates has executed a massive portfolio pivot that completely contradicts the mainstream narrative. We are talking about cutting their holdings in Meta by over 46 percent, alphabet position by 40 percent, and they even cut Microsoft by 10 percent. These are the companies that completely defined the 2024 and 2025 bull run.”

“The core issue they are pointing to is the infrastructure cost. If the cost of building out the servers, the power grids and the massive data centers for AI outpaces the actual dollars and cents it generates in revenue, the math simply stops working. It becomes a black hole for capital.”

“Private equity firms are lending billions of dollars to AI start-ups entirely outside the purview of traditional banking regulators. If one major AI start-up defaults on that private debt because their models don't generate the promised revenue, the contagion in that unregulated debt market could be incredibly rapid and entirely opaque until it is far too late.”

“They are stating that the AI-fueled stock market bubble is going to burst starting right now in 2026. Their thesis is that starting in 2026, those spectacular gains are going to unwind precipitously because rising interest rates and a higher, stickier inflation rate will essentially act as gravity on these sky-high equity valuations.”

“When you buy a tech stock at a massive premium, you're basically buying the promise of huge profits 10 or 15 years in the future. But if interest rates are high today, the mathematical value of those future profits shrinks drastically. When Capital Economics says inflation is sticky, they are saying the easy money era is over, which means the justification for these astronomical tech valuations evaporates.”

“Bridgewater Associates has executed a massive portfolio pivot that completely contradicts the mainstream narrative. We are talking about cutting their holdings in Meta by over 46 percent, alphabet position by 40 percent, and they even cut Microsoft by 10 percent. These are the companies that completely defined the 2024 and 2025 bull run.”

“The core issue they are pointing to is the infrastructure cost. If the cost of building out the servers, the power grids and the massive data centers for AI outpaces the actual dollars and cents it generates in revenue, the math simply stops working. It becomes a black hole for capital.”

“Private equity firms are lending billions of dollars to AI start-ups entirely outside the purview of traditional banking regulators. If one major AI start-up defaults on that private debt because their models don't generate the promised revenue, the contagion in that unregulated debt market could be incredibly rapid and entirely opaque until it is far too late.”

“When Mundy first arrived in Georgia, she was kept apart from the other elephants by a fence. Carol Buckley, who cares for the animals here, says she wasn't sure how the others would react. But one of them, called Tara, took an interest right away.”

“They're recovering from the trauma that they experienced living in captivity. And for them to open up and trust you while you are there with them, helping them work through it, it's indescribable.”

“The dominant political story of the year has been the 270-day-long speakership of Representative Kevin McCarthy, whose slim majority in the House of Representatives has enabled a far-right rebellion to exert more weight over the lower chamber. The battle between the rebellious Freedom Caucus and McCarthy has been at the heart of an averted debt ceiling crisis.”

“The rise of artificial intelligence and large language models dominated not only the economy but has also been at the root of a Hollywood double strike conducted by Writers Guild of America and a SAG APTRA strike. These were part of a larger phenomenon of labor strikes across the country.”

“2023 also saw the roots of a global banking crisis arise out of four American regional banks, the two largest being Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank. 2021's inflation surge moderated in 2023, while the Federal Reserve continued to raise its interest rates in the first half of the year.”

“And silver is interesting because silver and Bitcoin are almost been perfectly correlated recently. I don't know if you noticed that. Silver is down 7% today. It's not surprising. It's become the Nuvo Industrial Medal. And so the fact that silver and Bitcoin are new, there's nothing Bitcoin centric about what's happening today.”

“Trump comes out and basically repeats his normal talking points. He more or less quoted truth social. And the markets are like, holy fuck, he doesn't know what's going to happen. Remember, everyone in the market, in the media market, is very negative on Trump. And so, it's just that's true. I mean, look, the mass media is against him, thinks that this is going to be a disaster.”

“The only things that we know for sure are that if oil goes up and he loses control of it, it goes towards 150 or 200, it will trigger a demand shock. It's already doing it. Airplanes flying, prices have just gone way up. I'm going on a trip in a couple of weeks, we were going to meet somebody and they said, no, forget it. The plane tickets are way too expensive to go. So you're going to see a big demand shock about that.”

“Volcker had debt to GDP floating between 25% and 32% or something. Some would argue we're at 130%, right? It's not the same environment. He could hike to 20% without crushing the economy. What he did was he starved it. People were borrowing to spend. He starved it. People, investment was off the charts. And unions were basically demanding crazy pay raises. And unions mattered a lot more back then than they do.”

“The market is pricing, this drags out for a little while. It ultimately gets resolved in a kind of negative-ish but not horrible way where oil starts flowing again. And geopolitics is between the US and China, and we don't care. And everyone just kind of retreats into their bubble of not much has changed, right? That's what the market is pricing. That's where the malaise is coming from.”

“The party has changed, and we’ve lost that sense of bipartisanship that used to define how we get things done in Washington.”

“The party has changed, and we’ve lost that sense of bipartisanship that used to define how we get things done in Washington.”

“Wall Street often profits regardless of whether the underlying investments succeed.”

“Wall Street often profits regardless of whether the underlying investments succeed.”

“The party has changed, and we’ve lost that sense of bipartisanship that used to define how we get things done in Washington.”

“The party has changed, and we’ve lost that sense of bipartisanship that used to define how we get things done in Washington.”

“Financial success is way more about behavior than it is about the actual math; most people know what they're doing is wrong, they just can't stop themselves.”

“Financial success is way more about behavior than it is about the actual math; most people know what they're doing is wrong, they just can't stop themselves.”