Shifting Sands One detail I wanted to highlight is the Fed Balance Sheet which has shrunk by a remarkable amount since its peak in 2022 at $8.95T to $6.67T today. I labeled this section ‘shifting sands’ because while a nearly $2.5T reduction in the balance sheet is both a record and historically significant, it’s been offset by other lesser known…

Stablecoins Circle may finally IPO in the coming weeks or months. Circle launched in Boston in 2013 and is known for its stablecoin USDC. Stablecoins are fractional internet native programmable money market funds. In terms of global dollar dominance, almost all stablecoins are denominated in USD. There is $250B currently in USD stablecoins vs $580M in EUR stablecoins. Anyone in…

Dollar Impact, Dollar Network Even though US equity markets have recovered from their Liberation Day lows, most people instinctively suspect that Trump’s tactics have impacted markets beyond just S&P levels or the 10 year treasury. Apollo published clear data showing how certain correlations have been disrupted. In particular the US dollar has lost about 10% of its value, possibly attributable…

Warren Buffett hosted his final Berkshire Hathaway meeting as CEO this past weekend. Here are some thoughts and takeaways from listening to the 94 year old Oracle of Omaha. Currencies “That’s the big thing we worry about with the United States currency. The tendency of a government to want to debase its currency over time – there’s no system that…

Private v Public Debate Bloomberg columnist Matt Levine published a great commentary this week on the ongoing public vs private market tension. The punchline is, “And if an increasing share of the economy — and particularly of the fastest-growing and most valuable firms — is in private assets, investors can’t just index. You can’t get “the market return” by buying…

Continued Volatility The Financial Times had a headline this week, “Private equity goes risk off as it pauses dealmaking.” This period in markets is somewhat reminiscent of COVID shutdown, but to a much lesser degree of course. Businesses cannot build reliable financial models without policy clarity. I wouldn’t call this period “risk off” as much as I would call it…

Quick Notes – Reflections From This Week   Public + Private The equity market is more or less unchanged from one week ago despite falling over -12% over a few days and recovering the entire drop in a single day. Yesterday was one of largest single day rallies in over 15 years. As enthralling as that was, it’s not a…

It’s difficult to analyze the new tariff data when it is likely to change again in the near future. Trump’s Liberation Day tariff speech focused on a 10% general tariff and a series of reciprocal tariffs. Despite the supposed clarity of the numbers shown on the tariff chart, there are still many unanswered questions. We don’t know all of the…

There is a big difference between markets falling under stress from a single clear variable vs risk spread across many different narratives. It is worse to have a market focused on a single variable, like rapid rate hikes to cool inflation in ‘22 or the onset of Covid. Today there are many negative narratives in markets. The reversal of globalization,…