Market Thoughts, A Podcast & The Sable Waiting Game
Market Volatility And Toxic Assets, The Mariners Make It To The ALCS, Precious Metals And Geopolitics & The Sable Hearing This Week
Trump is back to throwing tape bombs this week after announcing 100% tariffs in response to Chinese export controls, and the market wasn’t a fan. We will see how long it lasts this time, but I doubt this pissing contest is going to last. The whole “Trump always chickens out (TACO)” idea is an oversimplification, but for a variety of reasons that other smart investors have highlighted, Trump and the US probably don’t have the pain tolerance required to create a huge recession and shit all over markets for any extended period of time. We will see what happens over the next couple weeks with this and the government shutdown, but I my guess is that the markets will be focused on the next thing sooner rather than later.
One of the things that I found interesting last week that was overshadowed by the tariff news late in the week was the First Brands bankruptcy. I’m not going to call it a Lehman moment, but I think it does provide an interesting example of some of the toxic sludge that is in Private Equity, Private Credit, and CLOs. The First Brands org chart does remind me a little bit of the Value Village audit I was on a while back (which wasn’t nearly as bad as this), but I think it will be interesting to keep an eye on asset management companies and BDCs over the next couple months. I have included a couple articles (not paywalled) that are worth a read.
Morgan Stanley’s 3 Lessons From The Shocking Collapse Of First Brands
I also wanted to highlight something completely unrelated to markets for any baseball fans out there. I have been a long suffering Mariners fan, and on Friday they gave me a good distraction from markets by pulling out a win in 15 innings against the Tigers. I was six years old the last time the Mariners made it to the ALCS, and I’m hoping they can make it to their first World Series.
Gold Goats n’ Guns w/ Vince Lanci
I only have one podcast this week, but if you’re even a little bit interested in precious metals, it’s worth a listen. Vince is one of my favorites to listen to on gold and silver, and Tom does a good job of connecting the geopolitical dots for listeners. They get into why silver spot prices are trading at a premium (and why that is very unusual), and the recent run in precious metals that signals something has changed. For anyone interested in the intersection of markets, geopolitics, precious metals, and current events, you will definitely learn a couple things from this one.