🇬🇷 Greece's Unemployment Rate falls to 8.2%.

This is less than half of the 20-year average. Greece has been on the up and up in a pleasant turn of events—especially relative to a numbers of peers.

More on Greece & Europe
• Greece Controls The Largest Share of Global Shipping [11/3]
• Greece & Cyprus Display Fiscal Responsibility 🇨🇾 [10/27]
• The Debtors & Creditors of Europe 🇪🇺 [9/26]
• Greece Leads Europe in Fiscal Shape [9/7]
• UK-Greek 10Y Spread Indicts London's Management 🇬🇧 [8/26]
• Greek Debt is Cheaper Than French Debt Now 🇫🇷 [7/24]

The Greek turnaround has been remarkable. Great for them.

🇬🇷 I N T E L R U N N E R 🇬🇷

🇻🇪 The Caracas Stock Exchange was up 17.9% today. It's up 300.84% month over month.

$IBC is benefitting from optimism about the new caretaker administration. It has been seeing significant speculative capital, including many hedge funds buying up distressed assets.

The rally has been led by the oil & financial sectors.

Some of it is just mechanical. $IBC (sometimes IBVC) is a shallow, illiquid market and it doesn't take all that much buying to move it.

But some of it is legitimate. Sanctions relief and economic revival may be on the horizon, and that's outstanding for the Venezuelan economy...

📈 I N T E L R U N N E R 📈

🇮🇷 The market for predicting whether the Ayatollah Khamenei will be out as the Supreme Leader of Iran by June 30th is up to a 44% chance.

Here are the percent chances for various removal-by dates:

🟢January 31st: 20% [+8]
🟢March 31st: 36% [+12]
🟢June 30th: 44% [+7]
🟢December 31st: 61% [+12]

What if we didn't bomb someone for a month? Just throwing it out there.

🇮🇷 I N T E L R U N N E R 🇮🇷

🇺🇸 The typical size versus the average cost of a new home since 2015 [U.S. Census Bureau]

The average size of a new single-family home in America has shrunk by 323 square feet since 2015, while the average price is up $161,000 as of 2024.

🏚 I N T E L R U N N E R 🏚

🇺🇸 The Stock Market Last Week

The S&P 500 climbed 1.57%, while the average stock returned 2.42%. 282 stocks outperformed.

Consumer Discretionary (+5.8%) and Basic Materials (+4.8%) were the strongest sectors. Utilities (-1.6%) was the only sector in the red. Tech came in flat.

📈 I N T E L R U N N E R 📈

🇺🇸 Does the entire income tax go to fraud?

Or just most of it?

📊 I N T E L R U N N E R 📊

🇺🇸🇸🇴 Remigration & denaturalization.

Remigration & denaturalization.

Remigration & denaturalization.

📈 I N T E L R U N N E R 📈

🇺🇳 NATO Defense Spending in 2024 (USA v. Everybody Else)

🇺🇸 = a metric fuck ton

🇬🇧🇪🇺 = half or less of that

Maybe we'll decide who runs that land mass off our coast.

Thanks.

📡 I N T E L R U N N E R 📡

🥇 Gold has hit another record high—$4,612.70 this time—in Sunday evening futures.

This is the first all-time high of this year and since the run of them Christmas Week.

🕯 I N T E L R U N N E R 🕯

🇺🇸 Average debt added over the holidays, 2015-2025

Holiday debt climbed the highest since 2022, with 37% of US consumers borrowing an average of $1,223...

📊 I N T E L R U N N E R 📊

🌍 The Global Returns Leaderboard for the week (plus two) ending in January 9th:

🥈 Ethereum 🔹 (+4%)

🥈 Industrial Metals 🌟 (+4%)

🥇 U.S. Small Caps 🇺🇸 (+5.7%)

🔽 CAD 🇺🇸 (-1.3%), EUR 🔣 (-0.9%), JPY 🔣 (-0.7%)

🔼 I N T E L R U N N E R 🔽

🌍 Central bank policy rate changes globally from 2020–2025...

🦅 I N T E L R U N N E R 💶

🌍 Value of merchandise imports from China divided by gross domestic product (GDP), expressed as a percentage

Services are not included. Based on IMF, OECD, and World Bank data.

🇨🇳 I N T E L R U N N E R 🇨🇳

🇮🇷 v. 🇮🇷 Oh.

Look at that totally natural collapse in the Iranian rial.

This one was clever. I'm surprised Tehran wasn't prepared for it.

📉 I N T E L R U N N E R 📉

🇺🇸 Speaking of regime change, we had one on October 29th of last year...

Since, the technology sector has been down 6.2% while everything in the S&P excluding tech has been up 5.3%.

This and the rotation to small caps have been the major shifts. The theme is breadth ascendant.

📈 I N T E L R U N N E R 📉