Item 1#: The ‘TACO Trade’ is now a meme: ‘Trump always chickens out’ trade is the talk of Wall Street.
The TACO meme describes the unfailing patten of Trump backing down when encountering resistance to his proposals, or is stopped by courts. This makes buying the dip on any Trump-related selling in the stock market a good opportunity. Yet again, I was right in April 2025 when I said to buy the dip. I correctly predicted Trump would backtrack and or be challenged by the courts, and that the stock market would quickly recover its losses. At this point few of the original tariffs are still in place, the majority having been rescinded or delayed. The ‘art of the deal’ is more like the art of the delay or the backtrack.
Item 2#: Bitcoin falls below $104K. I was also right about Bitcoin lagging stocks, as it has done for the past few weeks. I have greatly profited by shorting Bitcoin while being long tech stocks. My account balances keep making new highs on a daily or weekly basis due to the hedging properties of shorting Bitcoin combined with the leveraged tech positions.
Crypto almost always disappoints. It does not matter how smart you are. I seen guys who are maybe smarter than me buy crypto, and they regret it later. Typically they will buy a mix of Ethereum, Cardano or other coins (it’s almost never 100% Bitcoin), and then those coins will do nothing or fall as stocks keep going up. There are many folks who bought Ethereum or Cardano in April 2021 who are deep underwater as QQQ has continued to make new highs. Being smart does no good if you invest in crap.
Part of the rationale for why smart people may buy crypto is they think it’s like an extension of AI or the ‘next AI’, but it’s neither. It’s entirely different. AI companies generate actual earnings, like recurring Chat GPT subscriptions, but crypto doesn’t (unless you lend/stake it I suppose). Crypto also does not have real-world penetration, unlike AI, in which millions of people everyday use chatbots to be more productive. It’s too bad it’s not possible invest in AI companies, but the biggest players are private or are attached to existing tech companies, like Google’s Gemini chatbot.
You missed the train if you’re still buying crypto in 2025. The time to have bought Bitcoin or Ethereum was pre-2017, before its 20x rally in 2017 alone. This is when I was saying to buy, having done so myself in 2013 in the low $100s. You can check my blog archives when I said to buy Bitcoin from 2013-2017. When I say I am the greatest investor/money manager, forecaster or smartest person, it’s all documented with quantifiable results/evidence.
Post-2018, Bitcoin’s returns are much more anemic and correlated with tech stocks, but with more volatility and other risks, making it a suboptimal investment. This has been my main thesis. The fact Bitcoin has increased a lot does not change the fact of its suboptimality and the profit from shorting it.
Item 3#: For Some Recent Graduates, the A.I. Job Apocalypse May Already Be Here. “Some jobs” is a far cry from an “A.I. job apocalypse”. These people have been wrong forever and should not be taken seriously. Decades ago it was predicted computers would destroy millions of middle class jobs. Now it’s AI. Notice a recurring tendency by the NYTs and other media to lead with a strong claim “A.I. job apocalypse”, and then walk it back in the article. This is why the lines between alternative and mainstream media are increasingly blurred. Both use sensationalism, only the latter still has a patina of ‘credibility’ (whatever that means anymore when trust in the media is at all-time lows).
If AI makes companies more productive, it means they will grow and still hire more employees anyway in spite of AI. Instead of the labor force shrinking, existing jobs are repurposed and new types of jobs are created, instead of jobs going away altogether. This is has always been the historical trend.
Item 4#: On the Campaign Trail, Elon Musk Juggled Drugs and Family Drama.
The NYTs tried really hard with this Musk hit piece. It was well-researched, including even investigating his eating habits:
He plays video games for hours on end. He struggles with binge eating, according to people familiar with his habits, and takes weight-loss medication. And he posts day and night on his social media platform, X.
Is this a bad thing? He enjoys video games, social media, and junk food…just like most people! If anything, this makes him seem more relatable.