🇺🇸 3- and 6-month rate of change for Supercore CPI (all items less everything—kidding).

Supercore includes all items save food, shelter, energy, and used cars & trucks. Therefore, it was likely far less affected by the imputations & averages discussed yesterday. Maybe half a tenth.

📊 I N T E L R U N N E R 📊

🇪🇺 Low-Volatility Inflation Measures in Europe Have Stabilized

Core & Supercore inflation have been at 2.5% (with the most volatile categories stripped out). Low-volatility inflation itself is stuck at 2%.

📈 I N T E L R U N N E R 📈

🌐 Human Flight and Brain Drain

Where High-Skilled Workers Prefer to Leave and Where to Stay

📊 I N T E L R U N N E R 📊

🇺🇸 The prediction market for the Democratic nominee in 2028 shows strength continuing to rally for Gavin Newsom.

Are we really doing this?

🇺🇸 I N T E L R U N N E R 🇺🇸

🇺🇸 Existing Home Sales by Region

Compared to a month ago, sales rose 4.1% m/m in the Northeast, increased 1.1% m/m in the South, were unchanged in the West and fell 2.0% m/m in the Midwest. Compared to a year ago, sales were unchanged in both the Northeast and the South, fell 3.0% y/y in the Midwest and declined 1.3% y/y in the West.

The median price of all existing homes (NSA) declined 1.4% m/m (+1.2% y/y) to $409,200 in November. The median price of an existing single-family home fell 1.4% m/m (+1.2% y/y) to $414,300 in November. Prices of single-family homes in the Northeast edged up 0.9% from a year ago. Prices in the Midwest jumped 5.8% y/y; prices in the South rose 1.0% y/y. In contrast, prices in the West declined 0.8% from a year ago.

🏡 I N T E L R U N N E R 🏡

🇺🇸 Advance-Decline Lines for Large, Medium, and Small Caps

Look decent...

📈 I N T E L R U N N E R 📈

🇺🇸 University of Michigan Consumer Expectations

Overall in bold black, Democrats in blue, and Republicans in red...

That's the thing. Really it's black & blue following the mainstream corporate press and its partisan pessimism, and then red following the conservative corporate press/MAGA influencers and their obscene optimism.

📈 I N T E L R U N N E R 📉

🇺🇸 Existing Home Sales, Median Sales Price of Existing Homes, and the Percent YoY on the Median Sales Price

🏡 I N T E L R U N N E R 🏡

🇺🇸 The NASDAQ 100 ($QQQ) vs. the inverted MOVE Index ($MOVE)

Good to see bond volatility falling. Definitely a positive for the NASDAQ.

The MOVE index is like the VIX of U.S. treasuries; it measures bond market volatility. Inverting it tracks $QQQ particularly well because technology companies are so sensitive to changes in interest rates.

📈 INTELRUNNER 📈

🤑 $GBTC US Equity Relative Performance, 63 Trading Days Forward, based on 65-Day Bitcoin ETF Flows (10) 2015–2025

A bullish signal occurs when Bitcoin ETF flows slide beneath the 10th percentile; likewise, a bearish signal occurs at the 90th percentile.

The historical accuracy on the bullish signal is excellent, coming in at 85% wins for an average return of 89% over the subsequent 63 trading days.

We just experienced one such signal on the 17th. Therefore, we would expect substantial upside by mid-March.

🐵🦧🍉🍊

Not financial advice at all....

🌐 I N T E L R U N N E R 🌐

🇺🇸 President Trump's Approval-Disapproval Ratings from AtlasIntel — Trump is on the brink of a 60-40 rating! Disapproval is pushing 60%, and approval is already sub-40%. An enormous gap has opened up over the past two months.

As you can see in the post I'm replying to, this sort of approval rating is fairly common at this point in a second term presidency. Bush & Obama were similarly disliked. Here's some insights from the demographic breakdown:

🛑The age divide is substantial. Over the age of 45, disapproval barely leads. The spread is much closer to 2-3.5 points.

🛑The $50-100K income tier remains the most supportive of Trump, coming in at 47%-51%. By contrast, over $100K 38%-61% and under $50K is over 2-to-1 disapproving.

🛑16% of Republican voters have turned on the GOP President and now disapprove of the job he's doing. Moreover, almost 13% of Trump voters disapprove. For Trump, the midterms largely depend on convincing these voters he's not the liar, backstabber, and whore he very much appears to be.

✅ I N T E L R U N N E R ❌

🌍 The Returns Leaderboard for the week ending in December 19th:

🥉 Gold 🥇 (+1.4%)

🥈 Industrial Metals 🔩 (+1.9%)

🥇 British Equities 🇬🇧 (+2.7%)

🔽 Ethereum 🔷 (-3.5%), Japanese Equites 🇯🇵 (-2.5%), Bitcoin 💰 (-2.4%)

🔼 I N T E L R U N N E R 🔽

🇺🇸 Inflation-Adjusted Console Launch Prices Since 1972

🎮 I N T E L R U N N E R 🎮

🇯🇵 10-Year Japanese Government Bonds (JGBs) are officially yielding 2% for the first time in a long time.

The highest since 1998, in fact...

🔣 I N T E L R U N N E R 🔣

🇬🇧 Here's a seat estimate based on polling by Find Out NowUK on December 18th:

The Labour and Conservative parties, traditionally the big two, are getting destroyed. Ruling Labour would fall from 411 seats to 4.

Reform has exploded out to 394 seats—68 seats higher than the number required to form a single-party government outright.

💷 I N T E L R U N N E R 💷

🟠 Bitcoin has broken out of the falling wedge we observed on Friday.

It's re-testing the breakout now. Presuming that holds, I'd love to see the purple 50DMA ($93,180) surpassed as well.

That would be a bullish indication...

📉 I N T E L R U N N E R 📈

🇺🇸 The Jobs-Workers Gap is sitting at a neutral 0%.

It is the difference between labor demand (the sum of job openings & civilian employment) and labor supply (civilian labor force).

👨‍💻 I N T E L R U N N E R 👨‍💻

🇺🇸 5-Year Oracle credit default swaps have widened to 141 basis points, the highest since 2009.

Capital expenditures are up 200% YoY, equaling $20.5 billion over the last two quarters. This has flipped free cash flow negative to -$10 billion. Total balance sheet debt has jumped 43%.

In September, they issued another $18 billion in multi-tranche bonds, with potentially up to $38 billion rumored to be coming. With rates at 5-7%, every new $10 billion in fresh borrowing adds $500-700 million in annual interest, compressing their coverage ratio. As it stands, they're only two places above junk, and further deterioration in net-debt-to-EBITDA could cause a downgrade.

They're issuing so much debt, they've been forced to stop buying stock back and start issuing it again. $ORCL trades at a 50%+ premium relative to legacy software peers; earnings slip-ups could induce multiple contraction.

They are also highly dependent on OpenAI's growth trajectory, so any stumbling out of Altman's crew will have serious downstream effects for Oracle (and numerous other tech titans).

Put simply, Oracle, like other major AI firms, is experiencing a severe incongruity between the amount of money leaving the shop and the amount coming in. How long before Ellison joins the bailout chorus?

📱 I N T E L R U N N E R 📱

🟠 Crypto stocks & Bitcoin treasury companies supplanted altcoins in the public consciousness as they underperformed Bitcoin by $800 billion this cycle.

Treasury companies like $MSTR have sucked up quite a bit of the oxygen within the ecosystem. Another stark observation comes from Korea, where retail traders were once the core altcoin market but now seem more interested in crypto stocks like $COIN.

Ethereum benefited from the one substantial relief period in Q3, but that's plainly over now. What does the future hold for altcoins?

🧬 I N T E L R U N N E R ❇️