Mad Hedge Technology Letter
February 28, 2025
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(BITCOIN PRICE A SCARE)
(MSFT), (META), ($BTCUSD)
Posts
It’s fascinating that Bitcoin was supposed to be the new currency of the Trump administration, and under those conditions, one might believe the price of Bitcoin will double and triple pretty soon.
The results have been dire since the new President took over, with the price of Bitcoin cratering to $77,000 per coin from $107,000.
These devastating results have caught traders off guard, and many have lost their shirts in the quiet storm.
I don’t really care about Bitcoin personally, and I’m usually not in the business of recommending the product, but I do care what it signals about liquidity and the risk on/off sentiment.
The tariffs are starting to scare investors, and we see it in the price of Bitcoin.
Liquidity being pulled can create a cascading effect where nobody knows where the floor is.
Bitcoin could fall a lot further, considering many could just not be bothered to fight through the tariffs and can’t stomach it.
Nobody ever went bankrupt from taking a profit, right?
With all-time highs in many asset classes, it is almost as if Trump thinks he is playing with house money to push through aggressive strategies that put enormous trade pressure on other countries.
It’s a political calculus that fosters uncertainty, and many know that markets hate uncertainty, especially tech stocks.
On the heels of a good Nvidia earnings report, we have received a sell on the news price action, and that is very negative to the overall tech sector.
Year to date, we stand 3.5% in the red, but looking to March expiration, I believe this is a short 3-week buying opportunity until the next bevy of geopolitical chaos.
I recommend keeping your portfolio small for the time being and let the trade rhetoric pass through until you go big.
I did execute 2 more bullish positions in Palantir and Microsoft today.
A rout in Bitcoin deepened forced money to the sideline in the face of the most popular Trump trades.
Alt coins also did poorly too with Ether, Polkadot, and XRP all dropping more than 7% in one day.
Remember in 2022 during the crypto winter, when prices plummeted amid rising interest rates and industry woes.
Trump said Thursday that 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico would come into force from March 4, undermining hopes he might reverse course after a previous delay. He also said Chinese imports would face a further 10% levy, prompting officials in Beijing to promise “all necessary measures” in response.
The selloff underscores a swift change of fortunes for what was previously one of the most popular Trump trades in global markets: buying Bitcoin on the expectation that the president’s crypto-friendly approach would lead to a broad rally.
Traders are still waiting for Trump to come up with concrete steps for the sector, including a Bitcoin stockpile.
Trump has already made a few changes that have pleased crypto bulls, including putting crypto advocates in key positions. The Securities and Exchange Commission, which embarked on a year-long crackdown under former Chair Gary Gensler, has also closed investigations into several crypto outfits in recent weeks.
Readers shouldn’t get too rattled by the geopolitics.
More often than not, the bluster serves as a good entry point into tech stocks.
I do believe 2025 will be the year of volatility, and buying on these big dips is a big part of our benefit to it.
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
February 26, 2025
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(NVIDIA EARNINGS TO SWAY THE NASDAQ)
(NVDA), (META), (BTCUSD)
It’s been a steep drop for tech stocks the last few days and there is a lot to piece through here.
It was due at some point.
Look, we are at Himalayan highs in the Nasdaq and that doesn’t mean it will be smooth sailing from here.
To find that incremental dollar to push up tech stocks is not as easy as it once was.
We aren’t in the golden years of technology anymore.
The big question is why someone should input that extra dollar when there is a flattening of momentum in the entire tech establishment.
A.I. is the big two-letter acronym that everyone is focused on so it is not a surprise that profits are being taken leading up to Nvidia’s earnings.
Nvidia isn’t as ironclad as it used to be and that worries me.
Nvidia is carrying the market on its back like it has been doing for the past year and market breadth has remarkably narrowed.
If there was no Nvidia, we would be looking at a demonstrably lower stock market than this expensive stock market we are trading right now.
Remember that I urged readers to pile into tech stocks after that mid-January Deepseek selloff and that was the perfect elixir to profits.
Now, where do we find that indicator or signal to go green?
It’s a tough one and we must be patient.
All I have left in the portfolio is a bull call spread in Meta that has been taken out to the woodshed and beaten like the proverbial red-headed stepchild.
Then we look at other signs of liquidity and alternative barometers and Bitcoin has to scare you.
The quicksand drop to $85,000 per coin questions whether the bull market in tech stocks is still alive or kicking.
At the very minimum, the kicking is getting weaker and weaker each following earnings season.
But investors can hold on to hope for a few more hours. After the bell today, the world turns to fourth-quarter earnings for the linchpin of AI euphoria, Nvidia (NVDA).
This two-plus-year bull market has weathered several multi-month periods when Nvidia's stock price sputtered. But the company's stock hasn't contributed to the bull market since last June, as its share price has effectively gone nowhere in that time.
Over the last 10 years (40 reports), buying Nvidia stock just before the earnings announcement has yielded a median return of 3% to 4% on the one-day, one-week, and one-month time frames. Holding for three months has yielded nearly 18%.
The disparity highlights the volatile earnings reactions that might net bullish results but can also cause significant discomfort in the near term.
But for the entire Nvidia obsession, investors are right to question how much AI is still a picks-and-shovels or even an energy trade (as it morphed into in 2024).
If I had to nail down a date, investors expect the 2nd half of 2025 to calculate what exactly future cash flow will look like and if the infrastructure investment in AI is really worth the hassle.
A great deal of capital was asked to front AI and we are creeping towards that day where AI will need to sink or swim.
As it stands, the AI overlords like OpenAI helmed by Sam Altman, still puts on a happy face like nothing will fail to surpass expectation. It is easier to put on a good face when someone is worth billions upon billions.
In the short, we are preparing for a buying opportunity in the best and brightest.
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
October 21, 2024
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(BITCOIN PRICE ACTION IS GOOD FOR TECH STOCKS)
($COMPQ), (BTCUSD)
Mad Hedge Bitcoin Letter
August 16, 2022
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(ADOPTION IN ARGENTINA)
($BTCUSD), (WMT)
Just a short time ago, the South American country Argentina began the 20th Century as one of the ten richest countries in the world.
Its ranking in the world wasn’t that bad, comparable to that of, say, Germany today.
It had a per capita income much higher than that of Japan and Belgium and comparable to that of France.
However, that was then, and this is now.
Argentina has turned into a banana republic where a government filled with incapable politicians has grounded the country.
How did this dramatic change come about?
Well, that’s for historians to debate and I’m not a historian, but let’s talk about the current, now, and present about the dire Argentinian financial situation.
Argentina’s annual inflation surged past 70% last month at one of the fastest rates in the world after renewed political turmoil fueled price spikes and a currency rout.
It even beat Turkey out in the inflation Olympics.
Consumer prices rose 71% in July from a year ago, the highest level in about 30 years, according to government data published Thursday.
Skyrocketing prices pushed Argentina’s central bank to lift rates earlier in the day by the most in three years, raising central bank rates by 9.5% to 69.5%.
It signaled a tougher monetary stance against inflation, following another large rate hike just two weeks ago. Policymakers had been only raising rates once a month previously.
All the political turmoil added volatility to an already unstable outlook, with the black-market peso losing about 15% of its value in the month and local businesses jacking up prices 20% overnight.
To signal a tougher stance on inflation, the central bank committed to stop printing more money to finance government spending — a key factor driving inflation — for the rest of the year. However, other policies, such as removing subsidies on utility bills to improve the fiscal balance, stand to keep price increases high in the near term.
Consensus has it that inflation could break the threshold of 100% by the end of the year.
I’m not going to champion Bitcoin and crypto as the greatest thing since sliced bread.
It’s not and it’s a work in progress.
There is still a high chance that this iteration of crypto isn’t the final version of what goes mainstream.
There are just too many variables to know what will happen.
However, Argentina and its financial situation is a country that is screaming to adopt Bitcoin.
Nominally, consumers start to really suffer psychological damage when inflation and prices start climbing 25% per year.
Anything past 30% is a time when crypto really needs to be looked at by Argentinians and whoever is in a similar situation in whatever country they are in.
The chaos down south shows what could become of irresponsible financial policy down the road to rich, Western countries.
The hard cold truth is that 9.1% inflation in the United States isn’t that bad.
The Rubicon will not be crossed at these levels.
I would argue that American consumers could easily handle inflation at 20%.
Granted, the upper-middle class will start shopping at Walmart (WMT) and the Walmart shoppers will start shopping at the dollar store, but Americans can handle it.
In a broad sense, the use case for Bitcoin is really starting to become attractive in countries like Argentina, because when the government throws fiat currency under the bus like the Argentinian government, there really is no alternative but Bitcoin.
9.1% inflation is nowhere near risky when other sovereign nations are close to 100% year-over-year.
Mad Hedge Bitcoin Letter
August 11, 2022
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(FINK AT IT AGAIN)
(BLK), ($BTCUSD), (GME), (AMC)
BlackRock (BLK) investment fund was the first asset manager to surpass $10 trillion in assets held as the US Central Bank fueled the largest asset bubble created in human civilization.
That was a great achievement.
This is also why the CEO of BLK Larry Fink, as of April 2022, is worth an estimated US$1 billion according to Forbes Magazine.
Not too shabby.
Fast forward to the end of 2nd quarter of 2022, BLK was the first to lose $1.7 trillion in assets in the first half of 2022 when the tech market nosedived.
The monumental loss has resulted in some unique unintended consequences that have now manifested in BlackRock migrating into crypto by teaming up with Coinbase on a product designed to help institutional investors trade bitcoin.
The propensity for BlackRock to entertain asset inflow by sliding them into passive funds is great on the way up, but volatility has really twisted the fork into that strategy as the deleveraging in the capital markets has made it harder to achieve alpha.
How will BLKs new partnership work?
The world’s largest asset manager will allow clients to use its Aladdin investment management system to buy, sell and monitor their cryptocurrency holdings via Coinbase’s exchange, the biggest in the US.
BlackRock said the partnership will be focused on bitcoin – at least “initially”.
The move is the latest sign that some of the biggest players in traditional finance – known as TradFi in crypto circles – are confident in the long-term prospects for cryptocurrencies.
This major nod of approval to crypto was a glimmer of good news among the bad as Coinbase, which has been mired in multiple investigations from the Federal government, is handcuffed in regulatory limbo.
The major crypto exchanges have also slashed jobs at a dizzying pace with 1,100 jobs in recent months, after admitting that it hired too quickly during the crypto bull run of 2021.
Institutions made up about three-quarters of Coinbase's $309 billion in trading volumes in the first quarter, the company said in May. Among others, its clients include asset managers, large corporate treasuries, and asset managers.
I believe this is BLK's buy-low approach to the crypto industry as many critical pieces to the crypto infrastructure have flamed out in bankruptcy lately.
BLK wants to cover its bases by being able to take part in the next crypto resurgence if and when that happens.
This also gives them a low-cost exit strategy if the sushi hits the fan.
As investors believe rate cuts will occur next June, that obviously brightens the prospects for crypto prices.
This by no means translates into BLK exposing clients to major crypto investments.
I hear that they are advising high net worth clients into an asset allocation of 1-3%.
I highly doubt there will be a comingling of assets like crypto and equities into one branded ETF.
BLK most likely will silo the crypto business and see if it takes off all while taking a measured approach to its prospects.
The BLK management are already smoothing over the normal talking points like paying lip service to the superior technology of blockchain and how it can be “incredibly innovation and disruptive.”
Buzz words are nice on the ear but usually short on substance.
The truth is that crypto has been an absolute failure since November 2021 and its latest rally has evolved from the backdrop of an expectation of sooner interest rate cuts.
Unfortunately, the crypto industry was one of the few industries in America that got hit by the deleveraging bubble because it is the most speculative.
One might also throw in meme stocks like Gamestop (GME) and AMC (AMC) as secondary losers to the central bank tightening.
Even zombie corporate companies are alive and kicking as the tightening cycle hasn’t been that tight.
We are setting up for a positive 2023 and crypto could really take off when interest rate cuts become the new normal.
Global Market Comments
May 23, 2022
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT)
(SPY), (TLT), (TBT), (GOOGL), (AAPL), (MSFT), (BRKB), (NVDA), (JPM), (BAC), (WFC), ($BTCUSD)
