Market Review, 2025: Year of Dada Nightmares
part I: dada's end
Fear of Russian Pussies. Hoho.
Shame on you if you have been silent when you should have spoken in support. More - repent and redeem if you've been and are complicit, usually so in plural ways. Those emergent stories you tell yourself to turn yourself (and usually oh-so-smart-cool-righteous group) from the, well, villainous cowards you've been into the modest or immodest heros you would be, well.... the time of indulging such stories is ending. You know:
First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me.
Martin Niemoller
Sigh 2. Liquidity: the availability of liquid assets to a market or company. That's about all there is here, in the current market. It's a systemic expression largely detached from anything else. Money goes in each month, passively invested via etf's (exchange traded funds) often to the dumbest so called 'conservative' mixed 60/40 funds (sixty percent equities, forty percent bonds. You'll end up loosing money both in equities and bonds. It's 2025 for s+it's sake, not 1985.) Since last July, when the first waves of required US federal re-financing began hitting the liquidity barrier, markets could have and likely should have begun an inversion. Instead... we've been 'pulling out all the stops' to keep pumping these bubbles - no more parking money at the fed, another big round of bond buying/balance sheet expanding, let's do the stablecoin thing, etc. - keep making the wealthiest wealthier still, keep taking everything from everyone else. I'm basically now thinking the Trump administration et al will do the gold-nuclear solution thing: revalue holdings at absurd rates, maybe even 7,000 per per ounce if this keeps up. Maybe more. Which wont take much of a dent out of the debt but will eliminate the deficit.
disclaim and all: (Note to anyone perusing: for now, I've none of these things - those who know me know the primary cause. He did actually steal literally every thing. Just suggestions these and no conflicts of interest or certified advice. Investing, or betting, is always problematic and filled with risk. Then again, so can be eating a pizza.)
Can it continue, given all the massive shit that will be hitting the liquidity fan? Probably. (Or maybe - there may now be too many issues from private credit defaults to national defaults inherent in the numbers, aside from all that refinancing in the US, corporate and government.) If you turn the fan up even more. Which seems to be the idea. So, as but even more than last year, the least unlikely scenario at least to the 4th quarter of 26: market melt-up. And gold and silver still bulling forward. (Just to rub it in: Gold was my first recommendation after 'caution' in March of 2024. Followed, after hedging, by copper and nuclear, generically, that summer then bricks/emerging markets that fall, and silver/specific articulations for biotech and industry including AI winter earlier this year. Since April, the practice funds.) That said - the portfoliois still well-hedged beyond scenario coverage, with vixx holdings and naked shorts on european, s and p and the q's.
(The only change... some practically possible scenarios have increased their possibilities while others are diminishing. One of those diminishing is sustained western fiat money value. So... dont go crazy into bonds. Or variable interest rate loans. Period. More so on the long end. You might get a short-lived, still, opportunity with reduced rates but most countries have announced they're going heavy-rolling the presses, lots of money coming, asset prices - and inflation - as far as can be pushed. Hence the gold and silver.)
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part II. Portfolio
About four months ago a friend mentioned he was thinking of changing his million-plus 401 k portfolio. Simultaneously, I was wanting to get comfortable using options and forex while managing a portfolio, two things I didn't use way back when I did this immoral game. So I opened a quite realistic one million practice fund on September 8th, maybe a bit more expensive than need be, in which to use both options and forex even if the later a bit incomplete and the former a bit strict based on volume restriction rules. The graph on the top of the page is of the last 3 months, the list below current holdings in options and forex.
...though even without these two deals the overall equity portfolio would still have so far out-paced the S&P by a small bit. With them, options and forex, well, the line (on top of the page, the black one) is much smoother and the results rather lovely- 11.85 versus 6.39, that including the slow-ish, deliberate buy-in phase and having kept at least 30 percent cash. In the next post I'll go through the equities currently held, particulalry the biotech-med. Over the past 4 months some shorts have come and gone, ie Nvidia, Apple, Opendoor, while the companies of thematic articulations have skyrocketed or simply done well and been often mostly sold, most then a little bought back. Ie, Inodata - 'smart' AI, Coherent- including AI data centers among other things, Teck- copper and zinc, Kumatsu - mining, MOL - hungarian energy, China Shenhua energy, are all still held and to re-buy in case of the massively though I'm less sure proximal crash. Others, some health care for example... have been sold and aren't on, well, my radar for now. The 2025 EU in review can be summed in a music video:
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