🇺🇸 Will there be a recession in America by the end of 2026? [Polymarket]

The prediction market chances of a recession for the USA in 2026 have dropped to 22%.

They were at 46% on Halloween.

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🇬🇧 Prime Minister Approval Ratings By Days in Office

Net approval ratings for May, Johnson, Sunak and Starmer.

It's actually remarkable how quickly Starmer has matched Macron's 11% approval from last autumn.

You get a uniquely evil government in London because the political system is so boxed in by the shadow government. It will be quite a surprise if Reform pursues any sort of real change.

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🇺🇸 The reason this 16-Week Stress Window is particularly perilous is the bank reserves are already run down from absorbing the massive pool of treasuries that's out there these days.

We are definitely at risk of liquidity hording. We're only $79 billion above the Lowest Comfortable Level of Reserves delineated on the chart.

Think September 2019...

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🪙 Bitcoin's Whales & Sharks Still Adding to Their Bags, While Retails Jump Out

🐋 Wallets with 10-10K $BTC: Accumulated +36,322 tokens in the past 9 days (+0.27%)

🦐 Wallets with under 0.01 $BTC: Dumped -132 tokens in the past 9 days (-0.28%)

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🇺🇸 Yesterday was the worst cross-asset decline across $SPX, $TLT (20+ Year Treasuries), $LQD (Corporate Investment Grade Bonds), $HYG (Corporate High Yield Bonds), and $IBIT (Bitcoin) since Liberation Day.

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🇺🇸 The Russell 2K opened +0.45% or so. So far it's holding.

If it closes positive today, the 2008 record for consecutive trading sessions in which $IWM beats the S&P 500 ($SPY) in percentage terms will be in play.

Today would be the 13th straight session, so we're going for an opportunity at the record tomorrow...

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🇨🇳 China's economy grew 4.5% in the fourth quarter of last year. (At least if you take their claims at face value 🧂.)

Indeed, China's growth trajectory has emerged from the pandemic on a more downward slope. The era of outlandish growth is likely over.

Can we stop pretending they aren't a developed nation yet?

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🇺🇸 The 10-Year Treasury Note Yield ($TNX) has broken free from the declining trend it was in for the past year.

It currently reads 4.26%, which is up 2.77% since the breakout this month. It's also now above the VWAP that it's been responding to, anchored to the October 2022 high.

Will it drift to the top of the triangle as the Fed stands pat?

😎 I N T E L R U N N E R 😎

🇺🇸 Wow! I was going to point this out over the weekend but I decided to give it a day or two. Big mistake. Natural gas has had a huge first two days this week.

On Friday, it closed at $3.103/MMBtu. Yesterday, it was +25.91% to $3.907, and today it jumped another +28.95% to $5.038.

This is largely tied to the Arctic weather patterns sweeping North America, which on top being cold threaten "freeze-offs" of production and pipeline flows. It certainly helped that many people were caught short at the bottom when the forecast shifted.

Arctic air minus steady supply plus aggressive short sellers equals the largest two-day gain since 1990 for Henry Hub: 54%.

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🇺🇸 After a -6.8% reading in Q1, the S&P Energy Sector is expected to see positive earnings growth for the rest of the year.

In Q2, analysts expect +6.6%, undoing almost the entirety of Q1's contraction. Q3 is more modest at 1.4% growth, but in Q4 analysts anticipate a double digit expansion of 10.8%.

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🌎 The global bull market is officially as strong as 2021 was.

The 200-day moving averages of all of the countries are rising...

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🇺🇸 The evolution of the realized tariff rate from January to October of 2025...

The last recorded effective tariff rate was 10.9%, though it's constantly in flux given the nature of tariff use in this Administration.

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🇺🇸 America's effective tariff rate sits around 10.9%. However, if the Supreme Court tosses Trump's IEEPA tariff authority, it could drop to 5.7% quite suddenly.

That would undoubtedly not be the end of it...

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🇮🇷 Iran's Top Export Destinations

They're largely concentrated in Asia. These are the top 5:

5️⃣ Afghanistan 🇦🇫 – $2.29B

4️⃣ Turkey 🇹🇷 – $6.09B

3️⃣ United Arab Emirates 🇦🇪 – $7.16B

2️⃣ Iraq 🇮🇶 – $11.69B

1️⃣ China 🇨🇳 – $14.57B

It would be interesting to see what the rest of the world is composed of. These are all essentially neighbors.

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💰 Bitcoin vs. The Average Stock

This is the weekly chart for Bitcoin priced Equal-Weight S&P 500 ($RSP) shares.

It's not the best-looking chart.

Part of me feels like it's due for a bounce. Whales have been buying into retail sales, it's a bit oversold in the medium-term, and it's lagging similar assets.

But it's an ugly chart. There's no denying it's ugly...

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🥇 Gold's Record Run in 2026

Make that 12 record highs thus far this year, as we're currently sitting at $4,920.50 per ounce.

That's a year-to-date gain of 13.37%.

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🇺🇸 v. 🌍 The U.S. Dollar Index ($DXY) inverted (top) and the All-World Excluding U.S. equities vs. U.S. equities (bottom)...

The profits of international firms will be higher in Dollar terms when the Dollar is weaker. A weaker Dollar often signals a risk-on environment in which investors are comfortable moving out of the safety of U.S. assets.

We are likely entering a period of outperformance for the Rest of the World.

However, this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that U.S. exporters do better under the same conditions.

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