This Week’s Headlines With Revolution Analysis
We will do this week’s Live Q&A Chat today as usual at 3:00 pm ET in the TradingWithCody.com Chat Room or you can just email us at support@tradingwithcody.com.
I haven’t done one of these Headlines articles in a long time and I thought with all the news developments out there right now, I would probably find it helpful to put them in one spot and throw some analysis behind each one, like I used to do regularly in years past. If you all like this kind of article, let me know and I’ll start doing them more regularly again.
Israel and Gaza
Scene of Massacre Becomes Staging Ground for Israel’s Invasion of Gaza. ‘I Am Looking for Revenge.’
Fears of Humanitarian Disaster Mount
China’s Economic Stake in the Middle East: Its Thirst for Oil
First off, as a human being, I am saddened by these tragic events and I pray and hope that peace can find a way. Children and innocent civilians on both sides have been killed and are at high risk. As a hedge fund manager, my job is to analyze these events and how they might impact the markets and economy. Gold has popped this week and probably still has some upside. I’d mentioned last wek that I had been buying some GLD for the hedge fund and it’s gone from $169 to $174 in the eight days since then. I trimmed a little GLD today for the hedge fund but am mostly sitting tight with that position for now. Oil rallied higher Monday on the threat that escalating tensions in the Middle East could disrupt global supplies but oil has come down a bit the last two days probably on the possibility that OPEC+ members could pump more during tense times. I stand by my analysis from last week when I discussed how oil could trade between $70 and $100 for the foreseeable future. Stocks so far have mostly ignored the new war but the added layer of violent geopolitical actions probably is a net negative for the markets even if not a full catalyst right now. I’ve not made any major changes in my exposure this so far this week.
Crypto
Ellison Testifies on FTX-Alameda Ties at Fraud Trial
Why Paul Tudor Jones is still bullish on bitcoin
Extract: Going Infinite by Michael Lewis
Reading excerpts from Michael Lewis’ Sam Bankman Fried book “Going Infinite” and reading some of the testimony from SBF’s right hand lady has shocked me in that the red flags at FTX and around SBF and how careless and carefree he was with people’s real savings was ignored by all those who enabled him to grow to tens of billions of dollars in his alleged scams. For example, they lost $4 million of Ripple back when they were only managing tens of millions of dollars and they just didn’t care. Somebody should and probably is going to jail for many years for these crimes. Most cryptos are silly, stupid and/or fraudulent as I’ve been saying for years. I’m sticking with bitcoin as I have since 2013 though. I should mention that I bought a little more BITO Proshares Bitcoin ETF for the hedge fund on the bitcoin sell-off today.
Republican Democrat Regime
In Closed-Door Vote, Republicans Try to Nominate a House Leader
Who cares? The Republicans and Democrats are so dysfunctional and so angry at each other that I’ve lost pretty much any of the little faith I had that they could ever work together productively. Maybe that’s not a bad thing as most any law and bill they ever do pass is usually so convolutedly corrupt that it’s often better they don’t get anything done anyway.
Rates
Higher Rates Have Bank Stocks on the Mat
Rates, especially on the long end out past 10 years, have come down lately and I took some profits on about half of my TLT call options today.
The AI Revolution
AI News Just Keeps Rising
Explained: The conspiracy to make AI seem harder than it is! By Gustav Söderström
AI is developing ever faster and is about to start having ever more real world impact and it’s still surprising how few people have ever even used ChatGPT or the other ever-improving AI products out there. The AI Bubble popped as most of the fake AI companies who changed their names and/or stock symbols to imply AI capabilities have crashed. That’s good. Now the great AI companies, the best of which is probably being created by some kid in his parents’ basement right now, will eventually rise to the top and create trillions of dollars of value for the world in coming decades. I especially suggest watching the AI speech from Spotify’s Gustav that I linked to above. He does a great job of simplifying hard AI concepts and helping laypeople understand how it all works and how it all will work in the future too.
