The dollar's gentle decline continues as a rate cut this week seems certain. With a new Fed chair waiting in the wings who will be tasked to do the bidding of the president its tough to see the dollar rallying much from here. Take away AI spending, and the economy seems very soft.

Did Putin help draft this thing? giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Hard to improve upon Torsten Slok's list of 5 major market risks next year. www.apolloacademy.com/the-daily-sp...

At this point, zero effort is being made to obscure the grift. It's just grabbing government resources with both hands, in every way you can think of. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Really like Nick Timiraos, but "credibility with the markets" for Hassett?? Watch long bond yields, gold, dollar. It's not a stretch to see some of that starting--see long bond yield jump yesterday. Hassett will complete the installation of incompetents everywhere. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

The dispersion in performance among funds that target "value" or "quality" is quite large. Pure "quality" has under-performed; a cash flow focus has also under-performed (COWZ) though it beat the S&P over past month. And Ishares VLUE is killing it in this space. "Cheap" is often a tough concept.

We remain an 80%/20% economy--the 20% is doing just fine, and responsible for just over 50% of consumer spending. The 80% is getting battered from all sides. on.ft.com/4rzWDAY

Kudos to Bridgewater, with one of first hedge fund products translated into ETF form, ALLW. The fund is a global unconstrained fund. Probably best measured against a global 60/40 like AOR, which is has out-performed since inception by about 180bps. So why pay 2 and 20 for the strategy now?

Another reason to worry about the AI bubble trade: the data center backlash is well underway, with a likely result being they become more expensive. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/30/u...

Let's Ease Into That Bubble: open.substack.com/pub/barrinea...

After out-performing this year, emerging market equities have lagged the big bounce to end November and under-performed for the month. Given their run-up, they might be less sensitive to a softer dollar than international developed, and less positively affected by another Fed rate cut than the US.

South Korean equities, a major driver in EM's outsized returns this year, looks to have peaked in November after an incredible run, making the entire asset class less attractive going forward than developed international for us.

Putin is going for a grand slam: Get positioned to take over all of Ukraine, get the US to subsidize the recovery of the Russian economy, sideline Europe. Win win win for him, delivered by the naive, useful idiots now negotiating on behalf of the US. www.wsj.com/world/russia...

Where does value investing actually work? Internationally. The chart below shows a variety of value approaches versus EFA, the international index ETF--all have soundly beaten the index whether the focus was small caps, cash flow, or dividends. Sharp contrast to tech-centric US!

Dollar is looking toppy here. Likely a good time for more international equity exposure.

Commendable job by NYT here, given the state of mainstream media. Let's call this a good start, and when we start seeing dementia articles we know we are are directly facing reality. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/25/u...

Now that the market has seemingly decided we are a lock for a rate cut in December, its interesting that January odds for another rate cut are quite low as shown here, suggesting that a rally based on rate cuts alone probably isn't going to get too extended.

Bond market has responded to recent Fed member comments, and we are at a 2/3 probability of a rate cut, so hard to see how Powell pushes against this pricing. Atlanta Fed GDP Nowcast sees a 4.2% GDP print for Q3, tough to see a dovish message to accompany the actual cut.

The dollar is at six month highs. In those six months the S&P has out-performed international developed EFA by about 450 basis points.

EM equities faltering this month on a relative basis versus S&P on the back of continued dollar strength. EM had doubled S&P performance over the previous 3 months, but that super hot streak seems over for now.

This has all the makings of a geopolitical disaster of epic proportions. www.wsj.com/world/zelens...

Trump team busy with a plan to surrender Ukraine to Putin... on.ft.com/3KebmR9

This chart is from a nice Substack by Phil Bak: We are an economy of financial asset inflation. If you own financial assets, you are golden. If you do not, you are dead in the water. It's not much more complicated than that.

There is always a case to be made to get rid of a terrible leader of a foreign country. The points here apply to maybe a dozen countries. And history is littered with the cases of unitended consequences. Getting rid of Maduro could easily--easily--create disaster

Rate cut odds for December have essentially been cut in half in the past month. Over that period, the return on the Barclays Bond Aggregate has been negative 0.29%. We'll have to see if the narrative changes with the coming deluge of data.

High yield spreads have bottomed and started to rise, representing a tightening of financial conditions that will be a headwind to risk assets.

There are good and bad ways to tax the uber-rich--I think taxing unrealized gains is problematic, for example, but the big picture is: it's coming. The wealth disparity we have now is simply unsustainable, this is just an early iteration. www.wsj.com/business/cal...

Paying hedge fund fees for a hedge fund of this size, with an incredibly low probability of beating the S&P net of fees, is simply lighting your money on fire.

If tech is set to correct, it is logical that value strategies should do better. Two funds we quite like in this space--VLUE for domestic value and DFIV for international--have started to outperform their broad market peers.

If the Fed starts taking the massive wealth disparity into account as the lower 80% of the country struggles, and cuts rates because of it--who benefits the most? The upper 20% of course, who can take advantage of the financialization of everything. Must be addressed politically

Great data on something we all intuitively know by now: Media and tech wants to stoke our anger and division for eyeballs, because it works. on.ft.com/4oU8V4S

Consumer sentiment--quite the trend.

The Fed meeting marked the near-term peak for bonds, which have steadily retreated in price as December rate cut hopes faded. Tough to see a catalyst here that would turn this around. Higher yields not going to help equity risk appetite in general.

It has been a while since we had financial conditions tightening rather than loosening (readings below zero are loosening for the Chicago Fed index). One reading does not make a treng, but a stronger dollar and higher corporate bond spreads are early warning signals. Maybe BTC telling us the same?

With bitcoin falling and USD rising, another indicator of risk appetite fading is the sharp decline in small cap stocks.

Down about 5% pre-market. Another good earnings, bad market reaction story--very telling for what the market is thinking about valuations www.wsj.com/business/ear...

With the Fed no longer a lock to cut rates in December and core inflation at 3% and very unlikely to decline, we find little value in most traditional fixed income. If your best case scenario is price stability, you are still looking at a real return below 2% for wide swath of the universe.

One alternative income trade we like very much is writing covered calls on oil. OPEC is largely out of the way after pumping lots more barrels into the market. We could bounce along a rough bottom for quite some time, with drastic downside limited while you accrue income.

Japan has well out-performed the US over the past three months, and seems like a nice diversifier away from AI-bubble worries.

Sentiment Cockroaches. open.substack.com/pub/barrinea...

The WSJ, of all places, doing some nice reporting on the scale of Trump administration corruption, presumably while the op-ed guys squirm and prepare to write about Hunter Biden's laptop... www.wsj.com/finance/curr...

So you're telling me the guy running the business into the ground might leave if we don't give him a $1T pay deal?? In a rational world, that shouldn't be a tough call!!!

Sending an aircraft carrier to patrol for small boats is insane waste of resources, unless we are about to start bombing Venezuela, completely unprovoked. Trump Administration Live Updates: Hegseth Orders Warships and Planes to Latin America, a Major Escalation www.nytimes.com/live/2025/10...

He paid the grift, he goes free. Fair is fair in Trumpville. www.wsj.com/finance/curr...

I don’t care how deep into the cult you are, this should be shocking and, for most Americans, heartbreaking. Trump Administration Live Updates: White House Changes Course and Will Demolish Entire East Wing www.nytimes.com/live/2025/10...

I guess the crypto grifts are just too complicated; simpler to demand Justice just write checks to him for all of the past injustices he has had to endure… Trump Said to Demand Justice Dept. Pay Him $230 Million for Past Cases www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/u...

Bessent is going to "buy low and sell high" with $40B of your tax dollars in Argentina....for anyone who has followed Argentina, the peso buys are working out as expected, and betting in front of Argentine elections is a fool's game. Poor hedge fund risk management, Scottie...

This is the difference between a country with a long term plan and a country that constantly changes its policies and now has no real near-term recourse

Sound arguments to be wary of the Fed's cutting cycle, with 2 more cuts priced as a 95% probability. on.ft.com/4ho6o0w