Q: Are this weeks GLD flows just noise or a positive step forward?

Q: Motivations are hard to ascribe sometimes. But if you look at Chairman Powell’s background, a good chunk of his career was at Carlyle Group in private equity. If there is one asset class that is over invested in by institutional investors, it is P/E.

To quote Dan Rasmussen at Verdad, “Exits are falling and interest costs are rising, but what about portfolio company financials?” He talks about how exits are down 66% since 2021 and 44% from 2022. The most levered companies are P/E companies and most of these are funded with floating debt.

Maybe it is not the public markets Powell is worried about. A slowing economy coupled with higher for longer is not a great recipe for over leveraged portfolios.

Q: Hi Bill,

A few articles talked of a surprise rate cut by the Swiss Central Bank this week as if it would move markets in a big way. Has anyone in your circles (like James Aitken) noted this move to be of any significance?

Seems like more of wash, rinse, repeat all over again.

Q: Hi Bill.....interesting comment by Fred over on X the other day, and you of course over the years: the FED has been the enabler of out of control spending in DC! My question is - does the FED have a choice? Can it say no?

History often rhymes, how concerned are you we may be following the way of the Reichsbank. We all know how that turned out.

Q: It continues to be a simple bull market. Similar to your earlier comparisons with the 1998-99 environment whereby the Fed stepped on the gas, fearing Y2K would bring on a collapse of western civilization. Fed remains clueless, according to "conventional wisdom".

However, it seems rather obvious that instead of "clueless", a more accurate identity would be "electioneering". Regardless, their effort to restore a semblance of "normal" interest rates (still well below what used to be considered "normal"), and convince the "great unwashed" that they are serious about "fighting" inflation, they quietly engineered "stealth loosening", NOT overt "tightening".

Their messaging has been BS gaslighting of the highest order. So, we should accept the corruption for what it is and watch the "paid-to-play" crowd pile onto the indexers chasing their bogies and the CTA community riding the trend and probably expect a kind of straight up picture, similar to the 1999 tech bubble (NASDAQ up 70+% that year).

Again, that seems to be the "what", regardless of the "why".