From my global macro days, there are a few names that are sort of "Wall Street celebrities". When they visit, half the firm crowds in the room. Zoltan Pozsar is one of those names. He published an extraordinary note yest about the current crisis. Here I break it down for you:
The previous monetary regime, which he calls Bretton Woods II, is OVER. Dead. Finito. It died when the US and its allies seized Russian Central Bank assets, ending the period of CB immunity. Never again will Central Banks be "Made Men" (in the Cosa Nostra way)
Commodity price spikes are being driven by margin calls on traders who need to close short futures position. But when that's over, they are left holding the bag on Russian commods for physical delivery (that can no longer be delivered)
The central planners are totally unprepared for this type of commodities crisis. We have been looking everywhere but at a self-imposed gunshot to the head, because why would we ever have needed to pull that trigger?
There is a Balkanization of commodity markets unfolding currently that will require a complete and entire reset for commodity houses. Credit agreements, operational structure, pricing models, risk management, you name it. It needs to be re-created for the new world.
Every crisis is about the core vs. periphery. This is the alpha, and it's how you ultimately play it (and survive)
The PBoC is absolutely rethinking it's Central Bank Reserves right now
One response may be for the Chinese to print money to buy commodities. Lots of implications there, all of them bad for the dollar in the long run. LT rates skyrocket in the short term. And it doesn't help the west with inflation, we are still stuck.
The Fed can provide liquidity but this isn't a liquidity crisis here.
When this is all over, what comes next?
You already know.
Bitcoin.
Hope you found this breakdown helpful. There isn't much I miss about Wall Street, but hearing from brilliant people like Zoltan of @CreditSuisse is one of them.
h/t to @zackvoell for the original share on Zoltan's piece.
imho the single most **fundamentally** undervalued protocol in the market right now not named BTC or ETH (and arguably even including them) is $LINK. I'm an enormous $AAVE bull but that's still a growth, operating, and development story hence my use of the term fundamental.
The more I go down the DeFi rabbit hole (this fundamentally includes #bitcoin btw) the more apparent to me just how integral Chainlink is to the ecosystems developing now and in the future.
Security, redundance, bridging, and VRF (verifiable randomness) are key to building DeFi.
$LINK is far beyond an Ethereum story and while I love ETH I'm an ecosystem of ecosystems believer and my thesis is $LINK will be the first truly cross-chain behemoth. It also de-risks it, as no matter where we're going, we need $LINK.
I think there's two ways to try and wrangle a mental model around just what in the heck is going on right now.
See lots of "craziness/never seen anything like this before in my life/top signals everywhere but also who knows" which I think is FAIR and even CORRECT but prob WRONG.
The other side of it is I've also been sitting in markets for awhile and I've seen this sht everywhere. It's just been contained to pockets.
We have now fully transitioned to the On-Chain Mimetic Economy. To some degree we were always there, but we've crossed an event horizon.
Back in the day, you needed j*urnalists to go out to un-networked pockets of the world, find things happening, and bring that information 'on-chain' (into a newspaper) to network it back into our collective consciousness.
While I am an unabashed bull, going for the jugular on what I think is a career trade in the making, this is the internet so I have to put my Old Man hat on here for a second and add a little clarity and context.
If your plays have been working the past couple weeks, you're probably finding yourself in a bit of a mania. Faster heart rate, sweaty/tingling palms, sht, you feel it in your GROIN. Seriously.
You're talking faster, thinking faster, pacing. Starting to think "I'm gonna make it"
I hope you do. And I think you are. But now is the time to lean AGAINST those feelings and emotions. It's the time to meditate, to remove yourself from your body metacognitively. Examine yourself and your behavior. Are you truly holding things you believe in?
I'm gonna let you in on a little secret that few still understand fully:
The 'analysis' that Wall Street produces used to be a revenue generator, but now it's a cost center. That means it's treated as a loss leader and categorized as marketing. It's not meant to be correct.
Back in the day, the bulge brackets would hire hundreds of new analysts every year. Those analysts would primarily fetch coffee and lunch for a few years, but they had a real career path. Stick around and they could run a desk or a research operation, and make millions.
On the other side were lots of small operations. Most hedge funds and asset managers were small teams, and couldn't afford to send a team out to Taiwan to do things like supply checks. So the banks had their analyst army handle it, and that brought in business.
The strategy side of business and life that everyone is doing but is too scared to talk about.
This is likely to gin up a few unfollows, so let’s get started, shall we?
I’m a big believer in conflict. I love it. Rather than avoid conflict, the most personal growth I’ve gone through has come from leaning into conflict wholeheartedly. But all conflict IS not created equal. The right type of conflict builds empires, and the wrong type topples them.
THE WOLF
There is a popular trope of the Lone Wolf. And while true, the real power of wolf society imparts from tight-knit, tribal behavior and cooperative hunting techniques. But wolves fight, specifically over who will be the Alpha. How they fight however is what’s important.