🪙 Bitcoin and the ISM Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI)

This chart plots the Z-scores of Bitcoin's price and the ISM-PMI from 2011 through early 2026.

Synchronous peaks in 2013, 2017-18, and 2021. Congruent troughs in 2015, 2019, and 2022.

The essence of the point is that Bitcoin is very much a part of the macro environment and its cycles are essentially interactions of business & liquidity cycles.

📈 I N T E L R U N N E R 📈

🇺🇸 Discernment of Truth in Foreign Policy News Across Generations [Gallup]

Question: When you get news and information about US foreign policy, do you generally find it difficult or easy to determine what is true and what is not?

Naturally, Boomers are the most confident in their perception of reality. They're also the most reliant on TV news. It's not a coincidence that they're seeking out the least nuanced, most slanted presentations of the news and they think it's shooting fish in a barrel to identify the truth in modern "news."

Gen Z is, once again, the wisest, most circumspect generation. They're also the least likely to consume TV news.

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🇬🇧 The Find Out Now poll taken on Wednesday, January 28th in the United Kingdom

In brackets, the delta since July 23rd (the last half year):

• Reform – 29% [-5]
• Green – 19% [+9]
• Conservative – 17% [+1]
• Labour – 17% [-3]
• Liberal Democrat – 11% [-3]
• Scottish National – 3% [0]
• Plaid Cymru – 1% [0]

Bet you didn't think Reform & Green would be the leading parties for the next election...

Reform has shed a bit in the last six months. In my opinion, that's down to becoming a Conservative refugee camp and taking on their baggage. The Greens seem to have drawn even more support from the bases of Labour & the Lib Dems.

It's going to be a different sort of election, but I suspect in the end, the Brits will find it's really all quite similar...

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🇺🇸 The TS Lombard Liquidity Index has turned up.

This is an important development and likely a good sign for short-to-medium-term relief in risk markets.

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🇮🇳 Percentage of Rural Households Who Defecate in the Open

25.9% of rural Indian households shit in the street, on the banks of the river—anywhere really.

That's the point. Emphasizing your caste by shitting everywhere because it's beneath you to put a bathroom on your property.

Meanwhile, the actual developed world cries out "if you're shitting in the street, nothing is beneath you."

This is the same problem that's shitting up the shores of Lake Ontario.

💩 I N T E L R U N N E R 💩

🇺🇸 The prediction market for Trump v. Slaughter sees an 83% chance that the Supreme Court will overturn or narrow Humphrey's Executor vs. the United States. [Polymarket]

This is the latest in the counter-administrative state initiative that's been going on since the first Trump Administration. This would mean the presidency reclaims control over firing people working in the Executive Branch.

If they can manage to pull this one out (despite Kavanaugh & Barrett being almost as stupid as the Three Musketeers), that will be a great day for our crippled republic and its fabled Constitution.

🔨 I N T E L R U N N E R 🔨

🇺🇸 The price of a gallon of gasoline is up 4-5 cents year-to-date. We're averaging $2.87 in America as of yesterday.

Year over year, a gallon of gas is down 7.9%.

Obviously Trump is getting a lot of help from the price of oil on this. We shall see if prices so low can be sustained with the economy—and commodities broadly—heating up again.

⛽️ I N T E L R U N N E R ⛽️

🇺🇸 Kevin Warsh has conquered the day. The monetarist is the heir apparent to Jerome Powell.

He will take office as Federal Reserve Chairman this summer if approved.

Discussion: Implications of the Next Fed Chairman [NFU, Dec 22 2025]

🦅 I N T E L R U N N E R 🦅

🇺🇸 The FOMC statement this week registered as "materially more hawkish" than December, according to Augur's LLM.

The Fed is in an interesting situation, no? Stocks, ATHs; gold & silver, ATHs; housing, unaffordable; debt across the board, ATHs; trillion dollar deficit; yields, stuck; money supply, ATH; CPI, stuck at 3%; unemployment & difficulty finding a job, rising; bank reserves, precariously depleted; reverse repo facility, same.

There's really no way forward besides beginning the painful process of extricating ourselves from decades of bad policy, starting with the Fed's balance sheet.

Let us hope Warsh actually follows through on that and doesn't Greenspan out...

🦅 I N T E L R U N N E R 🦅

🇺🇸 2030 Re-Apportionment Forecast

Let's say only citizens were counted in the census and thus only eligible voters counted toward the distribution of House seats.

I know, crazy.

We can do this thanks to the 2024 5-Year American Community Survey's citizen population data, released January 29, 2026.

+2: FL, TX
+1: AZ, GA, ID, NC, OH, TN, UT

-1: IL, NJ, RI
-2: NY
-6: CA

So if you're counting at home, then you'll see that's 8 new seats for red states, 1 new seat for purple states, and 9 lost seats for blue states...

You have no idea the degree to which these elections are fake. It's so well beyond Tammany; there is no bottom.

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🇺🇸 Netflix, Inc. has been having a bad time. It's down 32.8% since October 21st. Something to watch because the move to the downside is starting to look exhausted.

Various phenomena have conspired against them. One is an appearance from Brazil's tyrannical Supreme Court (which is exercising of theory of global projection I don't think any court has yet attempted).

In this case, all the legal experts told $NFLX that direct service payments wouldn't be subject to Brazil's 10% tax on specific outbound payments. Of course they said "it does, and you owe us retroactively back to 2022."

And then voila! $619 million gone.

Then there's all the uncertainty over the competition against Paramount for Warner Bros. I suspect they'll probably get it, but Paramount is engaged in the sort of grotesque thuggery we've come to expect from the Ellison name.

Right now it looks like Netflix has it, but there are intercontinental regulatory hurdles (Europe wants to share our companies), and we'll see if the mafia (Paramount) is able to make any more lowdown moves.

🎥 I N T E L R U N N E R 🎥

🇺🇸 Highest Per Capita Gross National Income (2004 & 2024)

4️⃣ United States of America 🇺🇸 – $83K

🥉 Luxembourg 🇱🇺 – $85K

🥈 Switzerland 🇨🇭 – $95K

🥇 Norway 🇳🇴 – $98K

🔺️ I N T E L R U N N E R 🔺️

🇺🇸 Actual Minus Projected Unemployment by Age

Americans in their twenties are being disproportionately affected by rising unemployment.

Those under 25 are disproportionately unemployed. If they're college-educated, then they're disproportionately unemployed all the way into their early thirties.

We're at the back end of the cycle...

📈 I N T E L R U N N E R 📉

🇵🇱 Poland's GDP growth in 2022-25 (in %), and its structure (contributions in pp)

Healthy growth out of Poland.

May they resist the Euro and the migrant wave forever.

🌫 I N T E L R U N N E R 🌫