INTELRUNNER
There's just no getting around this being a problem. The article these come from stumbles through a few clumsy expert opinions into confusion, but I'll address that on News from Underground in a piece on the broader economic travails in China (in due course).
So where has the investment gone?
(1) Geopolitics & American Politics - Beyond the accelerating martial tensions over Taiwan and the South China Sea, there's also the matter of "de-risking" and "friend-shoring" envisioned during poor Chinese behavior during the pandemic (which probably had something to do with the U.S. national security state framing them for COVID-19, to be fair). The insecurity of China making all of the pharmaceuticals, for example, was enough to inspire a renewed effort to diversify away from China. So as the multinationals pursue a China+1 strategy, Western investment has shifted to Southeast Asia, Indian manufacturing, and Latin American near-shoring (particularly in Mexico).
(2) Trade War - President Trump has amplified this strategy with strategic tariffs (and: some other tariffs). Europe has joined in with trade controls as China sought to lean more into their market in response. This problem will compound as China runs around the world disrupting domestic industries with exceedingly cheap goods. As such, much of this supply glut turned inward, fueling intense competition and deflation, and thereby contributing to the sense of unease around getting involved in their mess. Their typically authoritarian response isn't helping that feeling.
(3) National Security - In this case, I refer to their own. A new anti-espionage law and data security laws introduce tremendous additional risk for companies looking to do business in China. Raids on consultancies and detentions of employees have made simple economic tasks like market research or data collection frightful propositions. How do you expand to China if your expansion can't even relay information to headquarters? Their tyranny (or "planning") is too stressful.
(4) Substantial Economic Headwinds - Gone is the double-digit GDP growth of decades past, when the West foolishly threw open its doors to anything and everything pouring out of Chinese factories. They've succeeded in making the immense technological strides they've been pursuing, but it hasn't translated into much additional profit in the current context (especially given the sustained hangover from their world-leading lockdowns; they've only been open for a few years and the "revenge spending" everyone expected never showed up). Unemployment is high, domestic & global demand is limited, and property market crisis persists. It's no wonder Chinese consumers feel this aforementioned uncertainty too and so are more inclined to save.
In short, no, they didn't mean to do it, and they aren't as good at planning as they insist they are to us online every single day...
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๐ช The Largest Bodies of Water in the Solar System
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๐ INTELRUNNER ๐
๏ปฟ๏ปฟ
Bodies like Titan and Ganymede hide multilayered oceans sealed beneath thick pressure-formed ice, a structure so unlike Earth that ordinary intuition fails to grasp how vast these reservoirs are.
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The Moon and Mercury, often assumed barren, actually preserve pockets of frozen material in permanent shadows-minuscule compared to planetary reserves, but astonishing given their exposure to relentless solar radiation.
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INTELRUNNER
If it loses another $10K, I'd be surprised if it didn't turn into $20K. That said, it looks like we're in for a little more bounce, market permitting.
The second chart is noting that on Monday, we closed another CME gap. This one's from late April.
Not financial advice, never financial advice.
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INTELRUNNER
The ETF is up 71.8% from its low a couple days after Liberation Day. $XBI is up 46.2% against the broader healthcare sector over the same period.
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INTELRUNNER
The 19 grocery stores are evaluated on the cost of acquiring sufficient goods to serve 6-8 people Thanksgiving dinner.
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Feels like easy money. Theyโll release something.
Let's write down everyone with a greater than 25% chance, which means recording the top ten:
Oof, timeout. MJ? Have you guys learned nothing yet? Hawking is quite probably in there somewhere given he attended Epstein's 2006 theoretical physics conference on his private island and he's in the black book. He's also photographed hanging out with Lawrence Krause while there (because of course Krause was there).
I kind of suspect Kissinger & Dimon aren't that stupid (and probably knew more than they'd admit today). Either of them could easily be caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time with him given their relevance, and either could be secret perverts. I sort of doubt there wasn't already copious blackmail on Biden by the time Epstein was in action, but regardless, he was (allegedly) President so his name could easily appear. We'll see.
Baldwin & Blair? Yeah, I could see Baldwin & Blair. Baldwin is prolific in his sexual harassment career and he & the White House are not exactly on friendly terms. Blair is a creepy fuck. He's in the book and Clinton pushed for him to meet Epstein in 2002 at Downing Street, but besides that he's a creepy fuck. I could see a redaction here though. That's what active investigations are made for.
Ehud Barak is the brutal Israeli PM that Virginia Giuffre has accused. We know he was tight with Epstein. They founded a company together, Barak was photographed going to his house many times, and he's in the emails we already have. Barak was seemingly managing this operation. It definitely involves the CIA, Mossad, and MI6 (and DGSE) and to the extent they're blackmailing politicians, it seems to have been largely targeted at the Democratic Party here in America, the (now crippled) Labor Party in Israel, and the (soon to be crippled) Labour Party in the UK.
David Copperfield is an interesting one. It's a good bet. We don't have any hard allegations regarding him & Epstein. We do know he gave him a lot of tickets to the Vegas show over the years and he was at the Palm Beach house twice. We also know over a dozen women have accused Copperfield of sexual misconduct spanning decades. So...it's a good bet. Naturally his lawyers insist they were mere acquaintances, but several victims have expressed doubt about the notion that he was clueless.
And finally, at #1, we have David Koch, the corpse Koch. His brother Charles is still kicking. Neither of them were big fans of President Trump. They've utilized an alliance of mutual interest in both terms, but both winning election seasons featured the Koch network funding Trump's rivals then sitting out the presidential after he won. Both winning seasons also featured insults from Trump toward the brothers, their company Koch Industries, and their "bad ideas."
This is actually a pretty smart call by the Polymarket crowd. There have no allegations whatsoever, but Koch does appear in the black book twice (both his NYC & Palm Beach contacts). That's not all that weird. They both lived in the same two places and mingled in the same philanthropic scenes. But to be abundantly clear: the name just has to appear in the filesโthat's the extent of the bet.
Koch makes sense because he loomed very large in American politics (and his family still does). So large that even amid the feud with Trump, he still ends up influencing Trump's policy on regulation & taxes (and even meeting with him once at Mar-o-Lago in 2017 with brother Bill Koch). And given the feud which flared up again in May (over the tariffs) is still simmering, the Kochs might have to threaten to sit out the midterms to get a redaction.
Can you forgive someone for funding Nikki Haley?
๐ฎ INTELRUNNER ๐ฎ
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BCA Chief Global Strategist & Director of Research, Peter Berezin:
Because if you take the numbers in this chart seriously, the hyperscalers will hold at least $2.5 trillion in AI assets by the end of this decade. Assuming a depreciation rate of 20%, that would generate $500 billion in annual depreciation expense. This is more than their combined profits for 2025.
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INTELRUNNER
โข Detroit (-2%) was the only major city to shed population; they're down about 100,000.
โข Charlotte (+93%) grew the most on a relative basis. They gained at least 1.4 million people.
โข Houston (+50%) and Dallas (+43%) grew the most in absolute terms. They added 2.6 million and 2.5 million people respectively.
โข The strongest migration is southward. Southern cities drastically outperformed northern cities in this respect. There's also something of a Western shift, exempting California. Vancouver (+43%) added almost a million.
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$SPY has also punched through the 50-day moving average and the daily Ichimoku cloud.
The primary American index opened the day by gapping up to the VWAP started on the October 29th intraday high. From there, it shed 3% straight back to the range lows...
I guess all of those signals we covered meant something.
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โข October 29 - NDX was up 15% vs. the Dotcom peak (adjusted for inflation).
โข October 29 - NDX runs into the upper bound of the channel (running back to May).
โข October 29 - SPX tests 1929-2001 trend line.
โข November 1 - A definitionally unhealthy bull market.
โข November 1 - RSP dead in the water on the year (indicating breath issues).
โข November 6 - 5-Day Cumulative of 1 Month New HighsโNew Lows.
โข November 6 - MAGS crushing RSP (suggesting breadth problems).
โข November 9 - More new lows than highs in the SPX.
โข November 9 - The Titanic signal goes off for SPX.
โข November 10 - The Titanic signal goes off for NDX.
โข November 10 - The Hindenburg Omen triggers for the NDX (even though the Omen is for the NYSE specifically).
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The survey of the industrial sector by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) shows ongoing weakness for orders and export orders as stocks build slightly more aggressively. The build out in stocks when orders and expectations for volume are falling is not a good sign and suggests that the inventory buildup may be involuntary and that may be setting the stage for weaker economic performance ahead.
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