Videos Of The Week
Trump Gets Off To A Fast Start, The Deepseek China (AI) Virus & Two Videos Worth Watching This Week
I was optimistic about Trump’s second term, but he is off to a fast start, and he has been firing off executive orders quicker than his tweets. I could nitpick about what he’s focused on, but so far things are going better than I expected. His first 100 days are going to tell us a lot, and if his Davos speech (and Q&A) was any indication, he’s not going to pull any punches. I am curious to see what comes out of the JFK, RFK, and Michael King Jr. (commonly known as MLK) secret files, and how much is redacted, because the textbook version that I got in high school around all three was basically a fairy tale. I’m hopeful that we won’t have to wait 60 years for some of the stuff that has happened in my lifetime, but if my prediction about the acceleration of the Overton Window shift is right, it will happen a lot faster than that.
One of the more interesting pieces of news that could impact financial markets is the news of the Deepseek AI program that was spun out of a Chinese hedge fund. The same week the Stargate Project was getting headlines about the potential to invest $500B, Deepseek (which apparently is on par with OpenAI) came out with a model that they supposedly trained for $5.5M. There have been a bunch of opinions on Deepseek. On one end of the spectrum, you have people saying that this is the end of the Mag 7’s AI spending boom and could bankrupt the companies that overspent on Nvidia NVDA 0.00%↑ chips. On the other end of the spectrum, you have people saying it’s China, they stole the intellectual property, they’re hiding Nvidia chips that they aren’t supposed to have, and/or they’re lying about how much it cost to build. It’s too early for me to have an informed opinion, but I have my popcorn ready. We will see how my prediction for AI in 2025 plays out.
The Market Huddle w/ J Mintzmeyer
This was my favorite video I watched this week, and the interview portion of the video is definitely worth a watch for investors interested in shipping. They talk about the global trade in commodities, the impact of sanctions, and a breakdown of the different shipping subsectors. J focuses in on dry bulk and tankers as two sectors he is watching in 2025, with Star Dry Bulk SBLK 0.00%↑ and International Seaways INSW 0.00%↑ being a couple of his picks.
For dry bulk, it will take some more optimism on the Chinese economy to get stocks in that sector moving. Iron ore and coal account for more than 60% of the dry bulk trade, and 55% of global dry bulk demand comes from China. He also pointed out that a huge chunk of the dry bulk fleet ages out by the end of the decade. The VLCC fleet (very large crude carriers) is also old, with 32% of the fleet over 15 years old and 15% over 20 years old. Shipping is an interesting and complicated sector, but I think it’s worth keeping an eye on a couple opportunities there for the next couple years.
Macro Voices w/ Michael Every
If you’re interested in the connection between financial markets and geopolitics, you will enjoy this one. Every talks about the return of volatility (geopolitical and in markets), tariffs, the dollar, and everything else he’s watching as we get into 2025. They also talked about the Panama Canal, Greenland, Canada, and everything else on the Trump geopolitical agenda. It’s going to be interesting to watch, but 2025 just might make volatility great again.
Almost every single economist you talk to, and certainly every market strategist will tell you they're a bad idea, they're inflationary, they're stupid. Only idiots would ever think about tariffs, and if you talk about economic statecraft, almost everybody is willing to use them, and historically everybody has used them, and historically they've used them extremely successfully, including pre-World War II America.
- Michael Every
really appreciated crude chronicles interview.
fyi martin luther king jr.