🇺🇸 The U.S. Treasury 2Y/30Y yield curve has steepened further…

📈 CHART WATCH 📈

🇺🇸 Cattle futures ($LE1!) just keep climbing, and there could be a couple more years of declining head count in this cycle.

You would think we had already run far enough by 2023 to encourage herd expansion. We’re up 90% so far this decade…

🕯 CHART WATCH 🕯

🇺🇸 Sources of U.S. Magnet Imports

Beyond broad, economy-specific US tariffs, attention is now turning potential US sectoral tariffs on semiconductors. President Trump has threatened that these could reach as high as 300%. If fully enacted with no concessions, such tariffs would undoubtedly ripple through the global semiconductor industry and across Asia, which accounts for most of the world’s semiconductor manufacturing and supplies the bulk of US imports, as shown in chart 5.

For American consumers, a broad 300% semiconductor tariff would likely lead to higher prices for a wide range of electronics. It would also affect other products, such as cars, which increasingly rely on electronic components, reflecting the pervasive role of semiconductors in modern life.

📊 CHART WATCH 📊

🇨🇳 China’s provincial fertility rates.

The situation in the Northeast provinces is well past critical. Those are the lowest fertility rates on the face of the Earth.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 CHART WATCH 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

🇺🇸 A lot of U.S. naval assets turning up in and around the Caribbean.

Are they for the cartels? Or the Venezuelans?

🚢🚢 CHART WATCH 🚢🚢

🇬🇧 U.K. Gilt Yields, 10- and 30-year. The Telegraph:

Willem Buiter, another former member of the Monetary Policy Committee, said that, unless Ms Reeves changed course, she would face scrutiny from the markets “that will be at least as effective as the pressure from the IMF was in the 1970s”.
He said the Chancellor “will be forced” to break Labour’s manifesto and raise taxes on working people in the autumn to calm the bond markets.
“I think there’s no realistic alternative to basically breaking the commitment not to raise key taxes, personal income tax, VAT, during this Government’s term in office. So she will be forced to do that,” he added.

Oh yeah, great idea…

💯 CHART WATCH 💯

🇬🇧🇬🇷 The Greek 10-Year Government Bond (GGB) yield subtracted from the British 10-year Gilt yield. Andrew Sentance, ex-Monetary Policy Committee:

“We’ve still got bond yields that are even higher than the US. In fact, we’re even higher than Greece when it comes to borrowing costs, which is an indictment of where the UK is at the moment, or where it’s perceived to be by the financial markets.”

Yeah, fair enough. In early 2016, still in the throes of their debt crisis, Greece was paying over 10pp more for 10-year debt. Now Greece is paying around 1.3pp less than the U.K.

💯 CHART WATCH 💯

🇺🇸 Severe correction in the Austin, Texas rental market…

Asking rents have fallen about 18% since mid-2022.

🏠 CHART WATCH 🏠

🇺🇸 The number of ETFs have surpassed the number of actual stocks…

🫥 CHART WATCH 🫥

🌐 Remember that “sell America” trade the financial press was trying so hard to sell you in April?

As it turns out, it never made it out of April, and a whole lot of “buy America” ensued in May & June.

💫 CHART WATCH 💫

🇺🇸 U.S. 12-Month Consumer Inflation Expectations: the Conference Board (dark blue), the University of Michigan (light blue), and the New York Fed (…I guess medium blue).

📈 CHART WATCH 📈

🇨🇳 Another look at the Chinese Internet ETF ($KWEB).

📈 CHART WATCH 📈

🇫🇷🇩🇪 10Y OAT-Bund Spread, in basis points…

📈 CHART WATCH 📉

🇺🇸 Will Lisa Cook, fired from the Fed over financial fraud, be arrested by September 30th?

Newly trading on Polymarket.

🤩 CHART WATCH 👿

🇺🇸 Apple's ($AAPL) $100 billion stock repurchase plan is the biggest among US announced buybacks so far this year, followed by Alphabet’s ($GOOG)…

🍎 CHART WATCH 🔍

🇺🇸 Buffett’s Top Stocks (1978-2024)

🍎 CHART WATCH 🌟

🌐 The gold price (GCV25) is extremely compressed with upward trending lows & flat highs.

It’s gonna blow!

🪙 CHART WATCH 🪙

🇨🇴🇵🇪🇧🇴 The production of cocaine is at an all-time high.

🧪 CHART WATCH 🧪

🌐 Average Altcoin Price (Top 150 Coins by Market-Cap, Equally-Weighted)

💰 CHART WATCH 🤑

🇺🇸🇨🇳 The number of Chinese students in America over time by educational level…

📚 CHART WATCH 🎓

🇺🇸 The chart shows cash burn at the Meta. The author is pointing out that in both 2022 & 2025, Zuckerberg was blowing through capital expenditure.

In 2022, investors punished $META with a 77% decline from its peak. This time, despite blowing a similar percentage of cash, the stock is up 45%.

I have a theory: in 2022, Zuck was wasting all of that money on the metaverse. People found that whole concept dubious. No one was all that interested in trading in reality for a new virtual life, and so the spend seemed asinine.

This spend is on AI & other market trends. It is congruent with the contemporary bubble narrative. Meta may be deluded once again, but if so, this time so are the investors…

📱 CHART WATCH 📱