Summary – A top-down review of interesting calls and comments made last week in Treasuries, monetary policy, economics, stocks, bonds & commodities. TAC is our acronym for Tweets, Articles, & Clips – our basic inputs for this article.
Editor’s Note: In this series of articles, we include important or interesting Tweets, Articles, Video Clips with our comments. This is an article that expresses our personal opinions about comments made on Television, Tweeter, and in Print. It is NOT intended to provide any investment advice of any type whatsoever. No one should base any investing decisions or conclusions based on anything written in or inferred from this article. Macro Viewpoints & its affiliates expressly disclaim all liability in respect to actions taken based on any or all of the information in this article. Investing is a serious matter and all investment decisions should only be taken after a detailed discussion with your investment advisor and should be subject to your objectives, suitability requirements and risk tolerance.
1.”Most pro-growth, pro-American”
How can any one be bearish on America in this setup? The quote above comes from, what we believe, are heartfelt sentiments from Bill Ackman of Pershing Square at the NYSE during the visit of President Trump to ring the bell. Other quotes are:
- ‘It is a great day. The president is in great spirits and we are stepping into the most pro-growth, pro-business, pro-American administration that I have seen in my adult lifetime, certainly.”
- “The CEOs, a broad array of big American companies. I would say everyone is incredibly enthusiastic. Really about a new administration on efficiency, removing the impediments to growth and deregulation. A lot of the confidence that comes from that.”
- With respect to immigration, the President is very focused on the safety of the American people and having an open border and not vetting people coming not, not having criminals in the country, that’s a pro-economy move—to get rid of people causing harm.
- The overarching thing is President Trump will do nothing that interferes with the success of the country, the success of the economy. Other than national defense, that’s his number one issue. I think he’s being very thoughts about tariffs. It is a very powerful tool that can be used to level the playing field. He wants a level playing field.
- I would say I’m more optimistic about the economy and the country than I have been in a long time.
- I don’t know anyone opposed to the business plan of this next administration. And it is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. At the backdrop is that you have a Fed lowering rates and inflation under control. You have the FTC, which will be more thoughtful about allowing transactions to happen. That is very bullish for markets. We talk about it all the time. We have the wealth effect. The biggest investment for most people today is the pension or the stock market-related portfolio. Housing prices going up. So, meaningful increases in asset values in a short period of time. That has a pro-economy effect. A lot of these are pro-secular in a positive way for the economy.
- I think most of the country understands that the more successful businesses are, the more the stock market goes up. And the more wages rise, the more job growth, and the more opportunity, and the more businesses that come to the country. It lifts all. I think the President got elected because of a large, wide base that includes low-income people in the country. That is what he feels a responsibility to.
2. “Don’t ever mock American Democracy“
The patriot who said that went on “it ain’t perfect; it ain’t pretty; but you know what American Democracy produced Donald Trump“. What specifically did Mr. Trump do that created this outburst from this patriot:
- “Trump issued a declaratory statement that may have prevented a nuclear war … Trump made it known that come January 20, everything changes .. “.
- Mr. Trump broke his silence & he condemned Biden Administration’s decision to allow ATACMS to be fired into Russia & said that this won’t be what happens under the Trump administration & he asked Russians to listen and act accordingly... “.
- “In response, Russia fired conventional weapons …. similar to those fired earlier & so not escalating“
This is a reasonably well-known man who, as he said, spent much of late last week walking “miles” in the Congress speaking to as many as he could asking them to pass a bill & convey to Mr. Trump the necessity of making a declaratory statement opposing the firing of ATACMS into Russia”. Mr. Trump was reached & he agreed and made a clear cut declaratory statement on Friday.
Listen to Mr. Scott Ritter yourselves in the first 15 minutes of his 56-minute clip. We have heard him before & we have not agreed with his views on a number of occasions. But in this case, he was 100% correct and he worked tirelessly to educate the Congress & the people in DC to act. If his logic is true & we are persuaded it was in this case, he has delivered a yeoman’s service to all Americans.
Mr. Ritter focused on this while every single media outlet focused on Damascus, Syria & Turkey et al all of which, while important, pales into insignificance with what Mr. Ritter focused on.
3. Down to the micro
Small caps have not been doing as well as predicted by many. But don’t they do well in the year-end rallies? One view is:
- Jeffrey A. Hirsch@AlmanacTrader – 3rd Times a Charm – Early “January Effect” Likely to Push Russell 2000 to New ATH. It’s been over 3 years! This seasonal pattern chart suggests once tax-loss selling abates, will finally break out & close at a new ATH. small-cap outperformance could persist into March. $IWM https://jeffhirsch.tumblr.com/post/769157301271773184/third-times-a-charm-early-january-effect
Many expect the stock market to fall somewhat once the new year sets in. Tom Lee of FundStrat suggests the opposite with a peak around mid-year.
- Seth Golden@SethCL – Fundstrat’s Tom Lee: On the heels of back-2-back 20%+ers, $SPX finds 7,000 by mid 2025, but finishes year 6,600 as tariffs, DOGE, and animal spirits reigned in 2H 2025. $SPX $SPY $ES_F $IWM $NYA $QQQ $RUT
On the other hand,
- Seth Golden@SethCL – No way to sugar coat it… 1st year of Republican led Administration is, on average, not good for equities. Extremely stark difference from Democrat led Administration. Trump 1.0 bucked trend (2017) Can it happen again w/TAX ACT 2.0? Don’t make it political folks, these are just the market-administration facts! $SPX $SPY $QQQ $DIA $ES_F $IWM $NYA h/t @fs_insight
While everyone is bullish about growth & strength of the economy next year, a smart manager is arguing for a growth scare, possibly by late Q1 or early Q2. That might persuade the Fed to ultimately cut more than what the consensus expects. That will deliver a soft landing & the market will up double-digits next year.
Interesting to see that Warren Pies is arguing above for a reverse of what Tom Lee is arguing. He sees a growth scare leading to Fed cuts leading to a double-digit return presumably in 2nd half of 2025 while Tom Lee argues for a double-digit rally that peaks in 1st half of 2025 & then fades.
Most people suggest that the current miserable performance of health-care stocks suggest a rally. Below is a message that points to 1993 & that health-care debate.
- SentimenTrader@sentimentrader – For only the ninth time in more than 70 years, the percentage of S&P 500 healthcare stocks trading above their 200-day moving average dropped below 50% as the S&P 500 maintains over 75% of its members above their respective 200-day average. This rare divergence last occurred during the Dotcom bubble in 1999; before that, it emerged in 1993, when potential healthcare reform led to a devastating bear market in healthcare stocks.
Does this mean you have to make a political bet about reform in health care payments?
4. A newer Black vs. “N”-word type protocol in Mag 7 discussion on Fin TV?
First the excellent discussion with the perfectly correct pronunciation on Bloomberg TV:
Haslinda Amin, the veteran host of Bloomberg Asia interviewed Aswath Daa-mo-daran of NYU about Mag 7. This is an excellent discussion & hence we feature it in its entirety. A few excerpts are below:
- “in a sense, I have never seen a group of companies carry a market for as long a period as the Mag 7 or the FAANG as they used to call them …. 15% of all the gain in all US equities across 7,000 stocks has come from 6-7 companies. The numbers are mind-boggling. … we are talking trillions of dollars in market cap added every year. The Mag 7 companies alone, if they were a market, would be the second largest equity market after the US equity market…. the reality is these are special companies . They have been able to scale up not just revenues & growth but some of them are insanely profitable. NVDA has profit margins of 75%, that’s outlandish; their operating margins are 60%; these companies are cash machines … as a value investor, I have never seen cash machines as lucrative as these companies are & I don’t see the cash machine slowing down …. “
The clip below also has a discussion about NVDIA, the final comment being:
- “to me the big tests for NVDIA is not whether people will buy their chips but whether they can turn out products & services that people are willing to pay for“.
Now to what we see as Haslinda’s professionalism & dedication to correct pronunciation. Watch & listen to the first 12 minutes of the clip & notice that Ms. Amin correctly pronounces his last name as “Daa-modaran”. Kudos & Thanks to her.
Now think back to a period when referring to Black-complexioned people with the “N’-epithet was commonplace. As people started protesting this abominable insult, more & more people began using the “Black” term instead of the N-term. Some presumably refused to do so even on TV until they were reprimanded.
That brings us to CNBC’s Scott Wapner and his seemingly deliberate refusal to say “Daa-modaran” & his habit of mispronouncing it as Da-modaran. He knows the difference is an insult to the name just as mispronouncing Jesus is an insult to both Jesus & Christians; or deliberately mispronouncing Moses is an insult to Jewish people. And Wapner would never do that because he is aware of the career risk in being perceived as anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, anti-Muslim.
But Hindus are different to him, it seems. Watch him mispronounce Daa-modaran this past week (just watch 1st 17 seconds):
This also goes to demonstrate the clear difference between the ethics & culture of Bloomberg Television vs. CNBC. Based on what we have seen, Bloomberg is committed to ethics & non-racist behavior on air. Unfortunately CNBC has a track record in mispronouncing & insulting Indian names, especially sacred Hindu names.
But what about the professor himself? You can hear the above two different pronunciations by Bloomberg & by CNBC. Surely this man could have corrected the anchor who used the wrong pronunciation. He didn’t. Clearly this man just wants to be on Fin TV & doesn’t care about his own self-respect, respect for his parents who named so so or respect for his religion. Frankly & sadly, this is quite common in Hindus. And that is why the term Brit-bootlicker is applied to Indians more often than to any other race. Just search for “indians bootlicking Brits” on Google.com and see how many articles you find. Or as Perplexity answers:
- The term “bootlicking” in relation to Indians and British colonizers is a derogatory expression used to describe subservient or overly deferential behavior by some Indians towards their British rulers during the colonial period.
That behavior obviously continues even 75 years after the British left.
Ask yourselves if CNBC would allow any of its anchors us the N-term for a guest even when the guest is fine with it. Absolutely zero chance of that in our opinion.
Someday, we hope deliberate mispronunciations of Sacred Hindu terms on & by CNBC TV would be noticed & criticized by all. We have given up hope that CNBC management will ever implement its own policies to stop this practice.
5. Back to the Lawrence:
Last week, we expressed our guess that the film Lawrence of Arabia “was about the Arab fight to push out Turkey from Damascus & today’s Syria. Now Turkey is back in Damascus at least in some way“. One week later, Turkey is back into Syria & even into Damascus in a big way.
But this entire mess was due to the pathetic stupidity & greed of Assad, the previous head of Syria. Several sources have written & said that both Russia & Iran offered to upgrade, retrain & rearm the Syrian army which Assad refused. Why? Because Assad had been tempted with the hope of getting closer to Gulf states both for money & for normalization into the rich Arab world. In this process, Assad had even neglected his army. Not only were the Generals not getting serious money but the soldiers had become almost destitute.
It is said that Assad went to Moscow to beg just a couple of days before the storm broke. The news of the failed meeting reached the right people. From what we heard on TV, the Head of Israeli Shin Bet flew to Ankara to meet the head of Turkish MIT. The Turkish MIT head met leader Erdogan & it was launched, they say.
It was so simple on the map – Just follow M5 highway down from Aleppo to Hama to Homes to Damascus:
This time it was far easier in practice. First fell Aleppo, the ancient city so dear to President Erdogan’s heart. The fighters reported that the city was empty of all security forces. So they went down to Hama, Homs & then to Damascus. Nobody, neither Turkey nor Israel nor anybody else imagined all these would fall in less than a week.
Why? Because the Syrian army simply went home. And as, an analyst remarked, “if the Syrian army wouldn’t fight for Syria, why would any one else fight?” The Israeli army simultaneously took Golan Heights & sent tanks down to about 25 km from Damascus.
We think both Turkey & Israel were stunned at the speed & extent of their plan’s success. As Scott Ritter said “… for me the proof was nothing like this was planned is that Jaloni, the Al-Qaeda head chopper who killed Americans, helped create ISIS is suddenly in charge of Damascus… ” Our guess is that neither Turkey nor Israel nor the US strategists that presumably had backed the plan expected Assad to completely & totally fall and escape to Russia. Had Assad remained with a smaller portion of his regime, that would have separated the Turkey-backed rebels & the Israeli forces. Now there is no such dividing line between Turkey & Israel.
This was seen on day one in US talkers beaming satisfaction on TV about an awful defeat of Putin and the reversal next day with Senator Lindsay Graham talking about sanctions on Turkey. Neither Israel nor Turkey wanted to be physical neighbors with their forces facing each other. Look at what Turkey owned during the Lawrence of Arabia days:
Turkey now has everything it did then except half of the purple portion above which is divided between Jordan & Israel.
Wait a minute. The above might well be true but it may not matter to HTS, the new name for Joloni’s organization, rebranded & retrained from old ISIS. Remember where ISIS expanded to? Northern Sunni Iraq up to Baghdad & northeast into oil rich areas of Mosul, Kirkuk etc.
In case the map isn’t clear, the purple area to which Deir al-Zour & Mosul, Kirkuk belong are Kurdish. The Syrian portions of this area north of Deir al-Zour is where the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) reside. These are US-backed & supplied. To their left, coming from Turkey is SNA (Syrian National army) that is backed & supplied by Turkey.
Sadly that is the past tense. Four days ago, HTS defeated the US-backed SDF & seized the oil-rich city & province of Deir-Ezzor:
The area is 3 times the size of Lebanon & contains 30,000 sq. km. Also notice in the clip that HTS is now moving upwards to Raqua along the boundary of the oil rich province.
Now go north east in this map & focus on Manbij in the blue or Kurdish YPG (SDF allies) area. Why? US-backed SDF surrendered to Turkish-backed SNA & Manbij fell to SNA.
By the way, as we read, Israel has offered to go into the SDF area & fight the Turkish-backed SNA on behalf of Kurds & USA. And all this is just a week old. WTF is going on? Now look how interconnected the energy infrastructure is, all of which is presumably under US protection. But what if Turks & SNA now fight with Iraqis over these links & oil wealth?
Put yourselves in Putin’s shoes. He & his army is out of this mess; Russia still has the naval bases & the HTS-ISIS rebels still want to keep him at least neutral if not friendly. He still can deliver arms to the factions in the fight who want him on their side.
Now move to the other side of Turkey to the provinces of Azerbaijan & Armenia. Erdogan thinks of Tukey & Azerbaijan as two states in one nation. The problem is the middle region of Armenia. Israel is allied with Turkey on Azerbaijan’s side because Azerbaijan has given Israel access to Iran through its territory. USA has also been kinda positive towards Azerbaijan. We read somewhere this week that USA is now thinking of supporting Armenia given that US is now upset with Turkey.
Think how one week of bringing Israel & Turkey close to each other in a non-positive way has complicated matters. Don’t they wish Assad remained with a small territory that could divide Turkey & Israel?
How smart is President Trump to want to get out of this mess? These battles have been raging for over 100 years thru British & French empires. The real problem for President Trump is his vision of the Abraham Accords. With Israel’s move into Syria, would it be possible for UAE & Saudi to work together with USA & Israel? We hope so but are not sure.
Frankly, we can’t wait for January 20 to arrive!
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