1/ Druckenmiller's first mentor, Speros Drelles, would often tell him that "60 million Frenchman can't be wrong." Here's a thread on what that means and how to know when you should listen to or ignore the "Frenchman" (market)...

AI Big 10 (mag 7 plus MU, AVGO, AMD) have now matched the peak concentration of tech bubble. Doesn't mean it can't go further but worth nothing the company that we keep.

Financing the AI buildout will total $10.3 trillion from 2025-2032, or an average of 3.63% of US GDP each year: study. That "would be larger relative to the economy than the major US canal, railroad, electrification, highway, & telecom investment booms" brookings.edu/articles/finan…

Just now realized this, worth sharing. When Bessent buys heavily-discounted Covid-era long bonds instead of newer issues w/ higher coupons, he increases the margin to the debt ceiling. That's because, by the statute, the amount that must be held under the ceiling is the face amount. When he buys back a bond trading at 50 cents, he eliminates the full $1.00, and only has to issue 50 cents of new debt to do that.

RT @GroupFinom: I DON'T IGNORE SUCH SIGNALS Well, after tracking the downtrend since May, today the Summation Index is likely to close -50…

If history rhymes, the cost of capital is going up.

Positive breadth at the close on Monday will bring a 3rd McClellan Oscillator bottom, higher than the last two, which is a powerful bullish signal. We last saw one of those at the March 30, 2026 low.

Semis + Mag7/Hyperscalers up together today. This has been a rarity this year (semi vs hyperscaler correlation at an all-time low). The recipe for new S&P 500 highs is hypers + semis rallying together.

Sharply decelerating breadth near a multi-year high has sometimes attended important tops, underscoring the need for risk management in today’s setting.

One monthly chart has anchored my read of Bitcoin’s cycles since inception: cycle lows spaced 47 months (roughly four years) apart, with cycle highs arriving 35 months (roughly 3 years) after each low. The framework comes from @BobLoukas, founder of The Financial Tap.

From the Chart-of-the-Week series. Old-economy cyclical industries continue to come under pressure as higher oil prices and interest rates weigh disproportionately on these economically sensitive groups. Industrials, in particular, caught my attention this past week. The percentage of S&P 500 Industrials stocks outperforming the S&P 500 over the past 21 sessions fell to the lowest level in the data's history. Read the full analysis on our blog (open to the public).

Ask an artist about their process and they'll tell you great work can't be forced. Neither can the best relationships, roles, or investments. This week's essay is about where I first learned this lesson—as a young adult with a guitar in my hands—and the instinct it demands I keep unlearning. In markets: Bitcoin's four-year cycle pointed to an October low. Instead, it carved out a summer base and broke out early, and we've been expressing that thesis through Ethereum, now four weeks into the consolidation we expected. Equities are holding up despite higher oil and rates, crude remains sticky at 100, soybean meal broke out of its 10-month channel before reversing midweek, and corn is drifting back toward its 50-day after we took profits. Read "What Force Cannot Find" research.macro-ops.com/p/wha…

The 42-day rolling correlation between crude oil and the 10-year Treasury yield hit a record high this week.

Strong second leg in December oats.

China August economic data: Retail sales (a nominal figure): 0.4% yoy YTD fixed asset investment (a real figure): -7.2%. Our domestic demand tracker has fallen to levels even below that during the Shanghai COVID-19 lockdown. “What is unsustainable will not be sustained.”

This week’s Chart of the Week takes a long-term view of interest rates, putting the current trend in historical perspective. The benchmark 10-year yield is on track to record its 74th consecutive month above its two-year low, a stretch not seen since 1967, when yields were entrenched in a secular uptrend. Read the full analysis on our blog (open to the public).

One of the more reliable warning signs is when junk bond traders flee before stock market investors catch on. It's not like it predicts a crash or anything; just a generally tough market environment until the junk bond A/D line starts rising again.

Equities had a weak Sunday night session but are bouncing now with cash markets open. The Nasdaq is lagging as small caps take the lead. This is noteworthy given rates are probing new highs and the Russell tends to be the most rate-sensitive index. However, if you look at positioning, the Russell outperformance makes more sense: speculators are short the Russell and long the Nasdaq (see images, courtesy @MacroOps). A squeeze here could kickstart a nice rally in small caps, or at least more relative outperformance. The VIX Monday pop got some extra juice from the equity weakness. It opened in the high-17s but has already retreated to the low-17s. VVIX nearly made it to 100 on the open but has settled back into its comfort zone in the mid-90s. It's still a tough environment to be long vol, and we see that in VIX futures, which are well off their overnight highs. September VX expires on Wednesday morning so it will be tracking spot VIX closely. My attention is fully on the action in the October and November contracts, which currently sit ~0.6 vol points apart. That ain't much. $SPX $SPY $NDX $QQQ $RUT $IWM $DJX $DIA $VIX $VVIX solana:XsqgsbXwWogGJsNcVZ3TyVouy2MbTkfCFhCGGGcQZ2p

FULL EMPLOYMENT, MASSIVE DEFICITS... macro-ops.com/full-employmen…

Investors have all but concluded the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates next week for the first time in three years. The harder question is what comes after that. Because almost no one at the central bank thinks a quarter-point increase will do much on its own to bring inflation down, a decision to raise rates next week would reflect a judgment that interest rates have been in the wrong place. If that is the case, one increase won’t fix it. “If we get a hike next week, certainly we’ll get additional ones,” said Richard Clarida, a former Fed vice chair who is now at Pimco. wsj.com/economy/central-bank…

The Saudis confirm the attack on their pipeline came from Iraq. Which means that, from a Saudi perspective: 1. Hormuz - their export route to the North - is closed by a war with Iran that the US-Israel started 2. Their pipeline to the South was taken offline from Iraq, a country the US broke with another war it started 3. They're fighting - and losing - against the Houthis in Yemen, whose war against them restarted because of the US-Israel war with Iran 4. The US is obviously incapable to defend them against these attacks and is now apparently flat-out refusing to intervene in Yemen (axios.com/2026/09/11/houthis…) 5. They are bleeding money at an accelerating rate and, ironically, we may soon see an "inverted petrodollar" situation whereby, instead of recycling oil profits into US Treasuries, they'll be forced to sell them to cover oil losses caused by US wars All in all, hard to overstate what a complete clusterfuck this represents. The US is supposedly running "operation economic outcast" on Iran but, very concretely, the Saudis are getting at least as badly "outcasted" as the Iranians in just about every dimension. And, unlike Iran, Saudi Arabia isn't structurally built to survive this. They bet their country's future on trusting America...