By Peter Tchir, chief strategist at Academy Securities

Since it is the start of the year, it seems like as good of a time as any to put a few things on record before diving into the meat of this T-Report. There are things that I want to refer back to over the course of the year because they relate to the business of strategy.

For the Record #1

Everyone hates strategists who claim to have called every move correctly. I can guarantee you that if someone called every move right in the markets, they wouldn’t be sitting in front of a computer typing missives because they’d be bazillionaires!

A close second for the most annoying behavior by strategists is touting their good calls and completely ignoring their bad calls (Bitcoin is back to $21,000 this weekend).

Some of this is human nature. We all “want” to be right and all tend to emphasize the “good” rather than the “bad”.

For the Record #2

Many of our readers have P&Ls. That is a discipline like no other and while I try to think of our strategies in terms of P&L generation, risk management, etc., it isn’t the same as having an actual P&L.

Having said that, we have people who live and die by daily/weekly/monthly P&Ls (which is ideal for Bloomberg IB as a form of communication). We also have people with weekly/monthly/quarterly timeframes (the T-Report is geared for these people). Finally, we have some who even think in years (which seems important for corporate strategy, but it is difficult to manage a portfolio around).

For the Record #3

One thing that strategists dislike is when people discuss their “idea” with them but don’t realize that it was the strategist’s “idea”! That is largely a failing on the strategist’s part. Either the work isn’t getting distributed well enough (a good time to check mailing lists, ensure things aren’t going to junk, etc.), the work/titles are too confusing (though I’m not sure I could live without writing I Like Big Banks and I Can Not Lie), or I just need to write more clearly.

Last weekend’s A Simple View is part of the process of addressing this issue going forward. 8 Seconds served the function of letting people know that our positioning had changed, but maybe the title was confusing (though the image of trying to ride a wild bull felt “informative” to me).

Finally, while the Fed is apolitical, I couldn’t help but send out the Shifting Politics of Inflation on Friday, because that has the potential to shift the national narrative and could either influence the Fed or (at least in the case of the WSJ) might be the conduit the Fed is using to signal a change.

On the Record

We will “subtly” shift from “for the record” to “on the record”.

Rachel Washburn hosted a fun and interesting webinar on Friday that started with World War III possibilities but ended in a better place. Generals (ret.) Walsh and Marks were spot on, and I was able to add a few points on how their geopolitical input is impacting our macro market and economic outlooks (replay will be available shortly).

Academy was one of three firms that participated in Friday’s half-hour Real Yield show on Bloomberg TV. You know a show covers a lot of fixed income ground when CLO ETFs get mentioned and it seemed to be a fluid part of the conversation (rather than forced). Some really interesting views and ideas from the other guests made this a great show to watch if you have about 20 minutes or so this long weekend.

On the Road

My favorite part of my job has kicked off in earnest! From D.C. and Princeton last week, to San Francisco, Palo Alto, Newport Beach, and San Diego this week, seeing clients is back in vogue. There is nothing more fun than sitting with people in a variety of jobs/industries and sharing ideas. I’m even excited for Minneapolis in early Feb (it will be cold, but should be fun) and look forward to another opportunity to speak to a group of municipal issuers in Alabama!

Travel and seeing such a diverse group of people allows me to learn about so many aspects of the economy and it makes my job so much easier!

Consensus is Neutral

Back to the meat of the report. If I’ve done a good job explaining myself this year, you should know that I’m basically neutral on stocks, bonds, and credit here. That view seems to be rather consensus.

The CNN Fear & Greed Index has bumped up to 63 (which is technically in greed territory, but just above neutral).

The AAII Sentiment Survey is in neutral territory (though very close to being too pessimistic). What was most interesting is that the number of bears has dropped from 52.3% to 39.9% since December 21st, but almost all of those people piled into the “neutral” camp as the number of bulls remained quite low.

I’m not big on technical charts, but this chart sticks out so much that I couldn’t help but use it to illustrate my “neutral” point (I’m not opposed to charts, but they just aren’t my first choice of things to highlight).

The S&P has snuggled right up against the 200 day moving average. From my limited understanding of charts, this is a crucial level. The S&P has failed to breach the 200 DMA since the sell-off took hold in late March. It could easily be rejected again. On the other hand, if it breaks through, we could see buyers emerge. Not only from all of those positioned as “neutral”, but from bears and particularly CTAs which have a reputation for being formulaic/algorithmic and tied to big levels (like the 200 DMA).

So maybe I should refine my view from simply “neutral” to “neutral, waiting to pounce on the next move – if only I knew what that next move would be”.

Even though at the start of today’s report we wrote about providing more “clarity” on views, I’d lean towards owning some tail risk in either direction! If we fail around here, many could press shorts and get out of recently acquired risk. If we break above, the opposite happens.

Yes, at some level this happens all the time, but the “neutral” positioning coupled with a major, very visible level (which happens to coincide with the big round number of 4,000) makes the next few days particularly interesting for me!

What’s Next for Inflation?

I think that inflation will continue to fall and we will see more monthly CPI prints that are negative and even Core CPI will have a negative print this quarter.

Many disagree, but I think that with Q4 coming in at 0.8% (3.2% simply annualized) we’ve “beaten” inflation.

What Will the Fed Do?

I’d be shocked if they did more than 25 bps at their next meeting.

Yes, they will talk about “financial conditions” (aka the S&P 500), but they are starting to get the political and media aircover to back down from 50 bps and some of their higher terminal rate calls.

There are still over 2 weeks until their meeting and we will get more data. I’m betting that if anything, that data steers them to “25 bps and done” messaging (probably too late for them to do zero, which is what I think that they should do).

The Fed will NOT be quick to cut. They should stop hiking, but even I’m not advocating for cuts (it would have been easier if they started on the glide path to stopping rate hikes a few meetings ago).

They will continue to do QT. This, to me, acts as an anchor on markets as every month we need to absorb more bonds from the system than if QE had not started in the first place. Why QT gets so little attention still baffles me.

The Bank of Japan is expected to let the 10-year yield rise to as much as 1%. I view this as “on par” with QT. It is another drag on asset prices in the U.S. as Japanese investors can allow some of their FX hedged/dollar denominated bonds to roll-off when the hedges come due and just buy domestic bonds. It isn’t alarming and won’t be all at once, but it adds to the pressures of finding dollar denominated asset buyers. With the 10-year bund at 2.16% this is already happening in Europe, but it also tells me that 1% is probably getting to the low end of the range that the JGB 10-year would naturally trade at given their domestic savings rate and still low levels of inflation.

What Will the Economy Do?

Yes, jobs still seem good, but that isn’t as important as it should be. What I’m seeing is a couple industries acting as the epicenter of the problems for the economy!

Big tech, fueled by everyone (from private equity, to vehicle manufacturers) took 5 steps forward in the past few years! Will we see one or two steps back as companies become more cost conscious and not every tech investment will be cheered by equity holders. Have manufacturers changed what chips they rely on as they’ve battled supply chains? Without a doubt, in 5 years technology will play an even bigger role in society and the economy, but it doesn’t mean that we haven’t already priced too much in.

I see a potential problem in this market that it is radiating out. The local economies are incredibly interconnected.

The homebuilder ETF (XHB) is up almost 20% in the past 3 months! This is a contrarian play that I probably should have gotten on board with, but this is an industry still in the early stages of digesting the spike in mortgage rates and overall loss of wealth in this country. I’m keeping an eye on this.

We will get some clarity and resolution on the inventory side of the equation in the coming weeks as we get the regular data and we also have companies discussing it in detail. I’m not optimistic, but maybe this will be a pleasant surprise.

Services could be the key. Was the print that we highlighted last weekend an anomaly or a harbinger of more bad news? Even as a bear on the economy, that data seemed surprisingly weak, so I expect something not quite so bad, but “less good” than most bulls are building into their forecast.

What About Earnings?

I will start by quoting my friend Peter Boockvar. He “guarantees” every quarter that about 70-75% of companies will beat earnings. His point, as I take it, is that expectations get pushed down to the point that most companies beat them, so there is little to be gleaned from the parade of “beats” that we will get.

We will all be listening to how CEOs portray their vision for the rest of the year. Their views will mean a lot, but they usually do.

My gut is that they will be more cautious than expectations, in part because some of the “wiggle” room that they had late last year has already been used. Also, they are in jobs where they want to outperform expectations, and even if your company is doing well, you might be cautious because you see companies around you going through tougher times.

The one thing I “know” for certain is that we will get a lot of chatter about stock repurchases post earnings announcements and unless something changes, that will help support equities.

It’s a Moving Picture, not a Snapshot

The biggest mistake people may be making is looking at the data as though it is static.

If we take a snapshot of recent data, it is easy to craft a “soft” landing narrative.

But we don’t live in a static world. Decisions made months ago (on the policy side, on the household side, on the corporate side, etc.) take time to play out. It would be fun if economists could drive the economy like a jet ski, but it is a huge tanker, and once underway it is difficult to turn or even change speed.

So, I 100% agree that the current data has a “soft” landing feel, but I don’t believe there is a chance that the weakening of economic data (alongside lower inflation) will stop here!

We had to be setting up to “catch” the fall here, and if anything, we are still pushing on this well past the point we should be.

Maybe I’m wrong here, but simple Newtonian physics tells us that an object, once set in motion, will stay in motion and that is what the Fed has done and we are going to blow right through the “soft” landing station and enter into some unsafe territory.

Bottom Line

Stocks

• Neutral.
• Own options that cost very little, but generate profits if the S&P 500 breaks 4,100 or 3,900 by the end of next week (yes, resolution will be rapid and I hope that I don’t miss it between now and when futures open, let alone in the actual market).
• “Gun to head” I’d bet that the rally continues and we test 4,200 on the S&P 500 which means I’ve got to get back on that bucking bronco (or I got off too early).
• We will break 2022’s lows, but that isn’t my gut for the next move.

Rates

• The 10-year at 3.5% isn’t particularly appealing. We should see corporate issuance spike after earnings announcements. 3.5% is quite inverted versus the front end with a Fed that will hike at least 25 bps more. The BOJ won’t help things. Positioning has become a bit bullish on bonds (at least from the chatter I hear). So, even in my deflationary view, I would not be long 10s here.
• I like 5-years better than other points. It is “only” 3.6%, so not much of a pick-up, but I like the risk/reward better in 5s. Maybe, the 2-year is more obvious, but it has so little duration and if I’m right and the Fed won’t hike (but also won’t cut), then there isn’t a lot of room.
• For now, I’d be short Treasuries/sovereign debt. Yes, I think that deflation will be the discussion point of this quarter, but for now, I just don’t see much value in sovereign debt.

Credit

• A “weird” barbell. I’m most concerned about leveraged loans (more so than high yield, because of the type of issuer that tapped that market, versus the bond market), but I like “senior” tranches of CLOs (anything IG rated and even BB). It is difficult to go lower in the cap structure of CLOs given the fact that the building blocks are my least favorite part of the credit market. Prices of various CLO tranches have bounced nicely in the past couple of months and new deals could accumulate some good collateral at really interesting levels.
• I’m “meh” on high yield and even investment grade.
  • High yield is so hated but while it is interesting, the combination of rate risk and credit risk isn’t a screaming buy to me (though certainly more of a buy than leveraged loans).
  • Investment grade is ok, but I think if Treasury yields rise, spreads will contract by 25% or so of the move in Treasuries, so I expect higher overall yields and lower dollar prices. If sovereign yields drop, spreads will widen on at least a 50% basis (if not closer to 100%). So, in a falling yield environment, IG yields won’t change much and dollar prices won’t do a lot (kind of a difficult risk/reward to pitch).
• So, I am equal weight IG and underweight sovereign debt. I am underweight leveraged loans and would use those funds to buy CLO tranches or some high yield bonds instead.

That’s what I’ve got for now. Will be an interesting week or two and it is difficult being so bearish on the economy, but neutral (and maybe “gun to the head” bullish) on risk in the very short-term.

You know it’s bad when…

No lessor liar than Rep. Adam Schiff (R-Calif.), the now former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, admitted this morning that it’s possible national security was jeopardized after President Joe Biden’s lawyers confirmed classified documents were found in various locations.

“I don’t think we can exclude the possibility without knowing more of the facts,” the California Democrat said of the Biden documents when pressed by “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl about any national security risks.

“We have asked for an assessment in the intelligence community of the Mar-a-Lago documents,” Schiff said.

“I think we ought to get that same assessment of the documents found in the think tank as well as the home of President Biden. I’d like to know what these documents were. I’d like to know what the [intelligence community’s] assessment is, whether there was any risk of exposure and what the harm would be and whether any mitigation needs to be done.”

Of course, Schiff was quick to get back on track with the narrative, as echoing the media and most other Democrats, the Russia collusion hoaxer asserted that Biden’s and Trump’s cases are different because Biden, he said, is cooperating.

“The Biden approach was very different in the sense that it looks that it was inadvertent that these documents were at these locations,” Schiff said.

“There was no effort to hold onto them, no effort to conceal them, no effort to obstruct the Justice Department’s investigation.”

Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff says he’s “going to reserve judgment” on the Biden classified document scandal because it was probably “inadvertent” that Biden left classified documents lying around his office, garage, and home.#Democrat #Schiff #ClassifiedDocuments

via @RNCresearch pic.twitter.com/kq8k0f0pVU

— TRUTH PUKE (@TruthPuke) January 15, 2023

It’s worth noting, however, that the National Archives had confirmed last year that Trump’s lawyers were cooperating with the agency before the FBI raided his Florida residence in August.

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

The U.S. Department of Defense may provide back pay to former service members who were removed for not receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, coming after the Pentagon repealed the mandate, a spokesperson confirmed Friday.

A Pentagon spokesperson told The Epoch Times, in response to reports from Politico and others, that regarding back pay, the “Department is still exploring this and will provide its views on legislation of this nature at the appropriate time and through the appropriate process.”

Dietz did not provide a timetable for when back pay might be considered.

On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a memo (pdf) formally rescinding the vaccine mandate after lawmakers passed a defense spending bill into law in December that required the change. The Pentagon had already stopped discharging service members who didn’t get the vaccine.

“The Department will continue to promote and encourage COVID-19 vaccination for all service members,” Austin wrote, coming about a year and a half after it was implemented.

“Vaccination enhances operational readiness and protects the force.”

Commanders can decide on whether to deploy troops who are not vaccinated, the memo said. That includes when COVID-19 vaccination is mandated “for travel to, or entry into, a foreign nation,” it added.

“Certainly commanders do have a responsibility to ensure that if they’re sending forces to a place that requires a vaccine that that’s a situation that will be addressed, you know, on a case-by-case basis,” Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder told reporters on Thursday.

“But you know, we have a responsibility for the health and welfare of our forces. And so, you know, again, depending on the situation and the circumstances, it is incumbent on commanders to ensure that they’re doing what they need to do to make sure those forces are ready.”

The contentious mandate forced more than 8,400 troops out of the military as top officials said they were refusing to obey an order for declining to take the vaccine. Thousands of people sought medical and religious exemptions, although a federal judge last month wrote (pdf) that the number of service members who successfully obtained religious exemption is far smaller than those who got medical exemptions.

Austin said more than 2 million service members, or 96 percent of the active duty and reserve forces, are fully vaccinated.

In August 2021 and after the Pfizer vaccine was granted emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration, Austin instituted the mandate and said that it was necessary to protect the health of the military force.

He and other defense leaders argued that for decades troops, particularly those deployed overseas, had been required to get as many as 17 different vaccines, including shots for anthrax. No other vaccine mandates were affected by the new rules.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters in December that the Biden administration believes removing the mandate was a “mistake,” repeating claims from Austin that the shot makes “sure our troops are prepared and ready for service.” President Joe Biden ultimately signed the bill when it passed both chambers of Congress.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin speaks during a news conference at the Pentagon in Washington on Nov. 3, 2022. (Andrew Harnik/AP Photo)

Despite those arguments, Congress agreed to rescind the mandate, with opponents reluctantly saying that perhaps it had already succeeded in getting the bulk of the force vaccinated. Some lawmakers have expressed concerns that the mandate and other policy directives have driven down enlistment in recent years.

Those members of Congress argued that ending the mandate would help with recruiting. Defense officials have pushed back by saying that while it may help a bit, a department survey during the first nine months of last year found that a large majority said the mandate did not change the likelihood they would consider enlisting.

Those who were discharged for refusing to obey a lawful order to take the vaccine received either an honorable discharge or a general discharge under honorable conditions.

Austin’s memo says that anyone who was discharged can petition their military service to request a change in the “characterization of their discharge” in their personnel records. It does not, however, say what possible corrections could be awarded.

The Ukrainian government has recently issued a call for its Western backers to provide heavy tanks so in can beat back Russian forces, after countries like Poland and other Eastern European governments have already provided an estimated 300 modernized Soviet tanks since last February.

But Kiev is urging for hundreds more Western-manufactured tanks to be sent, especially the US M1 Abrams. But so far Washington has only pledged light infantry carriers – the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

As we detailed previously, it’s now the UK and Poland leading the charge among allies to send tanks, given London lately announced it will send the the Challenger 2, widely considered a highly capable main battle tank. But a new warning from Moscow has said the decision will only intensify the conflict, saying that instead of bringing any significant Ukrainian edge on the battlefield, more civilians will be harmed in the fighting.

“Bringing tanks to the conflict zone, far from drawing the hostilities to a close, will only serve to intensify combat operations, generating more casualties, including among the civilian population,” a weekend statement by the Russian embassy in London said.

Undeterred by Russia’s warnings, Ukrainian President Zelensky thanked the UK for the takes, suggesting that Britain has made it easier for other allies to send heavy tanks. He said this “will not only strengthen us on the battle field, but also send the right signal to other partners“.

Zelensky and his top officials have also repeatedly requested air power in order to “close the skies” given clearly Russia has a significant aerial tactical advantage, though the US is now training Ukrainian personnel on how to operate Patriot anti-air defense missiles. 

“To win this war, we need more military equipment, heavy equipment,” a statement from Zelensky’s office also urged. Poland days ago pledged German-made Leopard tanks.

As for air power, UK tabloid papers have reported that Britain will also supply a handful of Apache attack helicopters, but this prompted an immediate denial of the claims by the British government. 

The tanks package is expected to be delivered to the Ukrainians “in the coming weeks” according to a UK statement, and it will be a squadron, or 14 ‘Challenger 2’ tanks, including over two dozen AS-90 artillery guns.

Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times,

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said that “swift congressional oversight” is coming, after the White House revealed on Jan. 14 that additional pages of classified documents had been found at President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware.

“We first learned about the Penn Biden Center classified documents months after they were found in an unsecure closet,” Comer wrote according to a statement.

“Then it took the White House weeks to inform the public about the documents found in President Biden’s Wilmington garage.

“And now days later, we are learning that there are more documents at the Wilmington residence. Are there more classified documents to be found?” Comer asked.

Classified Documents

It has been a tumultuous week for the Biden administration, since White House lawyer Richard Sauber on Jan. 9 revealed that documents with classified markings were found at the president’s former office space at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington.

The timing of the revelation has raised some questions, given that the public didn’t become aware of the documents immediately after they were found. According to Sauber, the documents were found on Nov. 2, 2022—just days before the midterm elections—and were turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) the next day.

On Saturday, Sauber announced that five additional pages with classification markings were found in Biden’s Wilmington residence two days earlier, in addition to one classified document found there on Wednesday.

The six pages were found in a room next to the garage at his Wilmington residence, according to Sauber.

The potential mishandling of classified documents and other government records from the Obama administration is under investigation by a former federal prosecutor, Robert Hur, who was named as a special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland on Jan. 12.

“President Biden’s three strikes against transparency will be met with swift congressional oversight,” Comer wrote.

“The White House, the National Archives, and the Justice Department failed to promptly inform Congress and the American people about mishandled classified documents from Joe Biden’s time as vice president.”

On Friday, Comer announced that his committee had already launched an investigation into Biden’s documents, in a letter to  White House counsel Stuart Delery. The Kentucky Republican requested the White House to turn over a range of documents and other materials by Jan. 27.

“The Biden White House’s secrecy in this matter is alarming,” Comer added.

“Equally alarming is the fact that Biden aides were combing through documents knowing there would be a Special Counsel appointed.

“Many questions need to be answered but one thing is certain: oversight is coming.”

‘Double Standard’

Following the discovery of another batch of classified documents at Biden’s home, some Republican lawmakers took aim at the Department of Justice, wondering why FBI agents have not searched Biden’s home.

“More classified documents found in President Biden’s home, yet still no FBI raid—the double standard is apparent,” Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa) wrote on Twitter.

“Americans deserve to know why President Biden had these documents & who had access to them.”

Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.) posted on Twitter, “WHERE IS THE FBI? TWO SYSTEMS OF JUSTICE!”

Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.) wrote on Twitter saying that Biden’s home “is a crime scene.”

“Why is the @FBI not raiding his home the same way they did President Trumps?” Harshbarger wrote.

“The @FBI owes the American people answers.”

FBI agents raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in August 2022, seizing over 11,000 documents and photographs without classified markings and around 100 documents marked classified or top secret. However, Trump has said he declassified the materials when he left office.

In November, Garland appointed Jack Smith as special counsel overseeing DOJ probes related to Trump.

“Full FBI raid happens when?” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) wrote on Twitter.

Investigation

The House Judiciary Committee is conducting its own investigation into the discovery of classified documents at Biden’s home and former office.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the chairman of the committee, and Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) wrote a letter to Garland on Friday announcing the investigation.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) speaks during an on-camera interview near the House Chambers during a series of votes in the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington on Jan. 09, 2023. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

“We are conducting oversight of the Justice Department’s actions with respect to former Vice President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, including the apparently unauthorized possession of classified material at a Washington, D.C. private office and in the garage of his Wilmington, Delaware residence,” the two lawmakers wrote.

“It is unclear when the Department first came to learn about the existence of these documents, and whether it actively concealed this information from the public on the eve of the 2022 election,” they continued.

“It is also unclear what interactions, if any, the Department had with President Biden or his representatives about his mishandling of classified material.”

The committee requested a range of documents and communications by Jan. 27, including those among the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Executive Office of the President.

“We expect your complete cooperation with our inquiry,” they added.

Former Alabama Broncos star running back Ahmaad Galloway died suddenly this week at age 42.  Galloway was an eighth-grade English teacher at Compton-Drew Middle School in St. Louis, Missouri. When Galloway did not show up for work, the school contacted authorities. Police conducted a welfare check and found the former football star dead in his apartment.  The cause of death has not yet been made public. 

Compton-Drew Middle School Principal Susan Reid said she knew something wasn’t right.

“Ahmaad was always on time, very responsible, so we knew something might be wrong,” Reid told WVTM 13. “There wasn’t anything disrupted at Ahmaad’s apartment, so we are thinking that it could have been a medical issue.”

His passing is just one among a flurry of sudden fatalities in the past year among athletes and former athletes in particular, occurring at relatively young ages.  In the majority of deaths, heart failure or circulatory failure is found to be the culprit.

Jordan Brister, 18, died Sunday, Jan. 8, after suffering a cardiac arrest on Jan. 3 during the school day at Amplus Academy in Las Vegas, according to a statement by the school shared by NBC affiliate KSNV. He was found unresponsive in the school bathroom after attending gym class, his family told KSNV.

According to local reports from Campbell County, 17-year-old Max Sorenson died of a “medical event” at his home Monday, December 26. Campbell County Coroner Paul Wallem said that following the medical incident at his home, the high school basketball player was rushed to the Campbell County Memorial Hospital in Gillette, Wyoming.

However, despite efforts from the doctors, he was pronounced deceased.

Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighter Victoria ‘The Prodigy’ Lee has tragically died last week at just 18 years old, of a medical condition which has not yet been revealed to the public.

A 16-year-old girl in Las Vegas has died after “suffering a medical episode during an athletic event according to a message sent to families,” reported KSNV, the NBC affiliate in Las Vegas. The student has been identified as 16-year-old Ashari Hughes. The medical emergency occurred Jan. 5 during a flag football game, according to The Las Vegas Review-Journal. The newspaper also reported that Hughes collapsed during her team’s home game against Valley High School. She was taken to the hospital and died later that night.

The list goes on and on.

Excess deaths have jumped dramatically in the US (excess deaths being fatalities beyond the yearly average).  The majority of excess deaths in the past two years involving people under the age of 65 were not caused by Covid infection.  At least 32,000 excess deaths in 2021 have been directly attributed to heart failure and circulation related failures.  Circulatory deaths were a major contributor to additional deaths among ages 18 to 44.

The UK has released information indicating a similar spike in excess deaths last year – The highest in 50 years, in fact.  UK officials of course deny any connection to vaccine side effects (an often cited concern by the public), and instead claim that heart failure may be the after-effect of covid infection.  However, multiple reports and studies show that the covid virus causes no significant damage to the heart and is not a contributor to heart failure, despite rumors spread within the mainstream media. 

For example, In March 2021, a group of sports cardiologists reported on nearly 800 professional athletes who had tested positive for Covid-19. Less than 1% of these athletes had abnormal findings on cardiac magnetic resonance scans or stress echocardiography. None of these athletes had cardiovascular trouble when they returned to play. 

This means that there is some other cause besides covid which just happens to have started in 2021.  Studies do show a direct link between covid vaccination and Myocarditis.  This would help to explain the jump in non-covid excess deaths related to heart failure since 2021, but since most studies investigating vaccination side effects do not use unvaccinated people as a control group, there is no hard data on vaccinated versus unvaccinated negative events.

There will certainly be deaths among younger people for a myriad of reasons that are natural, and the cause of death of Ahmaad Galloway and others may be any number of culprits as many medical reports remain unreleased.  That said, it is important to note the ongoing and highly suspicious trend of heart damage to people well below the age of commonality and track it carefully.

At least 68 passengers have been killed after a Nepal airliner crashed Sunday in the county’s worst aviation disaster in more than 30 years.

The Yeti Airlines ATR 72 plane, which is a twin-engine turboprop meant for short-haul regional flights, went down near the city of Pokhara in central Nepal, carrying a total of 72 people including four crew members.

Nepal’s civil aviation authority has indicated that 37 were men, 25 were women, as well as three children and three were infants.

Hundreds of rescue workers descended on a large hillside where the airliner went down. Subsequent circulating footage showed huge flames engulfing the area in the immediate aftermath of the crash. The plane appears to be at the bottom of a river gorge.

One local resident identified as Bishnu Tiwari, who assisted in rescue efforts, described of the massive flames: 

“The flames were so hot that we couldn’t go near the wreckage. I heard a man crying for help, but because of the flames and smoke we couldn’t help him.”

The plane had reportedly been preparing to land when the crash happened. The New York Times details of the difficult rescue efforts:

The Nepal Army said it had retrieved 66 bodies from the site as of Sunday evening. Rescuers had taken 29 bodies to a hospital for identification and at least 33 were still at the site, according to Brig. Gen. Krishna Prasad Bhandari, a spokesman for the Nepal Army.

Tek Bahadur KC, the chief administrator of the district of Kaski, where the crash took place said rescuers had to struggle to reach the site, at first because of all the smoke, and because the plane had gone down into a gorge.

Widely circulating but unconfirmed footage showed the plane roll hard just before going down.

A video showing moments before a deadly plane crash in Nepal that saw 72 people killed earlier today. The Yeti Airlines jet crashed near Pokhara International Airport in Nepal and was carrying a total of 68 passengers and four crew members. pic.twitter.com/4DbGY7nUi7

— Ali Hashem علي هاشم (@alihashem_tv) January 15, 2023

The report further indicates there were a number of international passengers on the flight: “Out of the 68 passengers on board Sunday’s flight, 53 were from Nepal, five from India, four from Russia, two from South Korea, and one each from Australia, Argentina, France and Ireland, according to Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority.”

In total there were 15 international passengers on board, and all four crewmembers were Nepalese.

The country of Nepal relies heavily on tourism, and these types of turbo engine planes are often used to fly passengers to remote cities and towns across the country, and are typically brief flights.

#Nepal
72 passengers were on board. Plane crash at Pokhra International Airport. pic.twitter.com/igBoObcCDm

— Aishwarya Paliwal (@AishPaliwal) January 15, 2023

Aviation monitors are now saying Sunday’s incident marks the third-deadliest crash in Himalayan nation’s history, with two 1992 crashes, one involving Thai Airways in July of that year which left 113 dead, and another involving Pakistan International airlines later in September which killed 167 people – among the deadliest.

Authored by Simon White, Bloomberg macro strategist,

Know your tails. In a year facing an unusually wide set of outcomes, knowing what the tail risks are and how to hedge them is of paramount importance.

The top three tail risks I see facing the global economy – and three havens offering a refuge – are:

1. Stubborn or resurgent inflation —> commodities and other real assets

2. US recession —> shorter-dated Treasuries or bills (or even cash)

3. Global funding crisis —> US dollar

A non-negligible risk facing markets this year and beyond is inflation that fails to fall back to pre-Covid levels and remains stickier and more entrenched. In this case, a greater exposure to commodities and other real assets is essential.

Commodities were the only main asset class to deliver a positive real return in the 1970s. Stocks, corporate bonds and US Treasuries all posted negative real returns in that decade. Moreover, commodities, despite their post-Covid rise, continue to be generationally cheap versus stocks and bonds.

Simply put, the investment community is still woefully underweight commodities, an asset that stands to be one of the few beneficiaries of persistent inflation. Using US ETFs as a proxy, commodities are only 2% of the total invested in stocks, bonds and commodities. Even a small redirection of flows from financial assets to commodities would lead to outsized gains in the latter.

Commodities are also a hedge against rising geopolitical risk, as countries seek to fortify their accessibility to raw materials essential for energy, infrastructure and renewable technologies.

How best to find safety from a US recession, the most likely of the three risks highlighted? Several reliable leading indicators are consistent with a recession beginning as early as the summer. Given the weight of data in favor of a slump, it would be remiss not posit that one is likely.

Treasuries are the haven of choice in a recession. Aside from their liquidity and the support they get from rate cuts, they benefit from raw fear: if you know in a panic people reach for US Treasury debt, then it’s rational to panic first.

Bonds have generally gone up for most of the past 40 years, so any historical analysis will have that bias. Still, it is clear from the chart below that Treasuries on average see an acceleration in their rally after the recession begins.

The caveat this time around is we are in an inflationary world, and bonds may not rally as much in an inflationary recession.

A way to mitigate this risk would be buying shorter-dated USTs or bills, avoiding some of the larger real capital losses that would come with longer-maturity debt.

Moreover, despite the recent rally, USTs are still deeply oversold and speculators remain very net short, meaning any rally has the potential to be turbocharged in a flight to safety.

The third major tail risk facing markets this year is a funding crisis, for which the dollar is a place of refuge. It remains the dominant currency in the international monetary system, despite initiatives to reduce the dollarization of the global economy, such as closer trade cooperation between China and Russia, and a mooted expansion of the BRICs. It eclipses the euro, yen, sterling and the yuan in FX reserves, debt outstanding and trade settlement.

Source: Atlantic Council

The Fed thus remains not only the domestic lender of last resort, but the international lender of last resort. Yet the US central bank is contracting its balance sheet, with the pace set to rise this year. The stickiness of the overnight reverse repo facility will ultimately ensure bank reserves bear the brunt of QT, heightening risks that dollar funding becomes scarce and expensive.

Disruptions to dollar funding often become self-fueling, due to the structural dollar short inherent in the global monetary system. In the chart below, we can see that rises in the dollar lead to falls in global crossborder lending in USD, as borrowers scramble to source dollars that are rising in cost, leading to default and deleveraging.

The dollar is likely to remain in a downtrend as long as the real yield curve keeps flattening, but it continues to be one of the best hedges if dollar-funding pressures arise this year, especially against EM currencies of countries with large external-debt positions and sizable current-account deficits, such as Turkey, Chile and Hungary.

Markets also face mounting exogenous risks this year, for instance a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Although not discussed here, such risks would likely precipitate at least one of the outcomes already highlighted.

In any crisis, it’s not about seeking what assets return the most, but finding what loses the least.

The options highlighted can’t be guaranteed to offer a positive return, especially in real terms, but they stand in a good position to outperform other assets in the scenarios explored.

A haven is defined as a “safe or peaceful place”. Unfortunately, 2023 is unlikely to offer any truly tranquil escapes, but real assets, USTs and the dollar promise to act as sturdy life rafts when a storm hits.

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

Ukrainian refugees in Britain are making return trips to their homeland to receive medical treatment instead of waiting to access the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS) after a spate of strikes brought the public healthcare system to its knees.

A report by British news outlet inews cited a number of instances in which those who had fled the conflict in Ukraine simply gave up on long wait times to access medical care in Britain, opting instead for the perilous 24-hour journey to the war-torn country to be seen by a medical professional almost immediately.

The left-wing news outlet used the reports to criticize Britain’s governing Conservative party, which has been locked in fierce, long-running negotiations with unions of NHS workers demanding pay rises in line with Britain’s inflation.

inews detailed the account of one refugee, Maiia Habruk, who reportedly fled the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv last year to settle in southeast London. After suffering a severe toothache, she logged her symptoms on an NHS chatroom and was told to expect a call from a medical professional the following day. This never happened, so she went to her local Accident and Emergency (A&E) department, also without success.

“After waiting four hours, the doctor didn’t even look at me, and she also told me to take paracetamol. Again, it didn’t help, and I was still in severe pain,” Ms. Habruk told the news outlet.

She ended up traveling back to Ukraine via Poland where she says she was seen by a doctor immediately.

“I was told it was an urgent issue with my wisdom tooth and that I had to have an extraction immediately.

“I do not in any way want to criticize the NHS. I think it’s amazing that everyone can get help for free,” she added.

The Ukrainian woman told the news outlet she knew of three others residing in London who had opted to return to war-torn Ukraine for medical treatment instead of waiting to use Britain’s public healthcare system.

Another Ukrainian woman living in the Scottish city of Glasgow, whose healthcare system is managed by the devolved left-wing Scottish government, also reportedly traveled home for medical treatment, according to Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton, who raised the issue with Scotland’s First Minister earlier this week.

Some members of the public took to social media to question whether it is right that those choosing to make trips back to Ukraine remain entitled to claim asylum in Britain.

“If they are able to and willing also to return to Ukraine then they weren’t a ‘refugee,’” wrote one social media user, while another said:

“If the refugee can go home to see their doctor, then why are they in the U.K.? If it’s safe to see your doctor, it can’t be unsafe to live there too.”

A third added:

“Odd definition of refugee if they’re going back to their native country for appointments. Very odd indeed!”

The U.K.’s Conservative government announced in March last year that Ukrainians arriving in England are eligible for free-of-charge access to NHS healthcare, including GP and nurse consultations, hospital services, and urgent care centers.

However, nurses and ambulance staff in England have been on strike over the winter as they attempt to force the government’s hand to agree to pay hikes. The strikes have seen millions of Brits waiting even longer for medical appointments and ambulance response times being the worst on record.

Two more 12-hour nurse strikes have been organized for next week, while ambulance staff will walk out again on Jan. 23 if no suitable compromise over pay has been agreed upon.

Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com,

We’re one tragedy away from pitchforks & torches…

“No one must ever ask where another rabbit was, and anyone who asked ‘Where?’ – must be silenced.”

In the story Watership Down a group of rabbits flee their home warren of Sandleford, ahead of its imminent destruction at the hands of real estate developers. They set out looking for a safe, new home and among their adventures they encounter another warren called Cowslip. There, all the rabbits are uncharacteristically large, affable and seemingly well fed. For awhile, the Sandleford rabbits think they’ve found a safe haven.

There’s only one problem: every once in awhile one of the the rabbits goes missing. It turns out the entire warren is on a farmer’s land who feeds and otherwise takes care of them, but then sets out snares and traps them from time to time for their pelts.

There is only one rule at Cowslip’s Warren, nobody is allowed to ask or talk about any of the missing rabbits.

I want everybody reading this to think of two numbers from asking you two questions:

Question #1) How many people do you know who died of COVID?

I first started hearing rumblings of a new Coronavirus emerging out of China in January 2020 (although it looks now like COVID was already circulating throughout the world by mid-2019).

When I got wind of it, I was emailing friends and colleagues to get N95 masks and to stock up on groceries and medications. It looked bad. By February I was probably one of the first people seen around town wearing an N95 mask. In March I started running a spreadsheet using R0, fatality rates and case-doubling times that were coming out of the CDC, the WHO, and shrieking hysterics like Eric Feigl-Ding:

The famous “HMOG Tweet”.

The screen grab above is the famous “Holy Mother Of God” tweet, which is sometimes speculated as having rang the bell beginning the global COVID panic. Feigl-Ding refers to it himself as a seminal moment, and he’s also since deleted the tweet. It is archived here.

He’s still at it, btw…

This guy has one setting.

— Mark Jeftovic, The ₿itcoin Capitalist (@StuntPope) December 21, 2022

When it was all unfolding, I was initially afraid. My rough model posited that by the end of May we’d have 442,368 cases with as many as 22,118 fatalities and that was just in Toronto. By the end of July, 1.7 million cases and 88,473 fatalities.

I laid out previously what happened and what turned me into a lockdown skeptic: every day I’d plug in the new case and fatality numbers from the city, the province and federal levels and by the end of May I realized that my model was bust. By fall I knew that case numbers were bullshit (it didn’t matter how many people tested positive on a PCR test) and that lockdowns were a bigger problem than the virus.

There weren’t going to be 88K fatalities across the entire country, let alone Toronto (the official fatality count now for all of Canada is 49.5K – and we also now know that most of those, upwards of 90%, were with COVID and not from COVID. Toronto had about 3.7K total fatalities in over two years).

I naively thought this was good news. Surely everybody was looking at the data and surely everybody could see by mid-summer, that even adjusted for seasonality and expecting another wave in the fall, this was nowhere near the THERMONUCLEAR LEVEL EVENT certain prognosticators were promoting.

We all know what happened instead: by fall it had become a full fledged religion and well on its way to mass formation psychosis.

But in the early innings of that, when it looked really bad, I figured it meant that probably about once per week we’d be hearing about somebody within our extended family, circle of friends or colleagues who would die from this. Ditto for celebs, the evening news would be saturated with odes and tributes to noteworthy people who were just felled by COVID. Maybe one or more of my immediate family would die from this. Maybe I would. It was scary.

From our vantage point here in early 2023, I can only think of three celebrities who died with COVID: John Prine, Herman Cain, and much to the delight of the zerocovid lunatics: Meatloaf.

On January 1st, 2022 I surmised that the pandemic was mostly over. During the main run of COVID I did lose about four people within my social circle, none from COVID or even with COVID. That figure doesn’t count another two people I knew about in my area who committed suicide under lockdowns.

So without diminishing the tragedy of any of those 49K Canadians who succumbed with COVID, my number for the first question is zero.

Question #2) How many people do you know who died “suddenly and unexpectedly” over the last 18 months?

Recall how I was expecting to be hearing at least once a week about relatives, acquaintances and colleagues that had died from COVID, but instead didn’t hear anything.

However, when it comes to relatives, friends and acquaintances who have suddenly and unexpectedly dropped dead of a heart attack or some other unanticipated medical event, over the last year to 18 months or so… well that’s a different story.

Three. That’s people in my phone contacts. People I was talking to one day or one week and who were dead the next, add one more for someone I knew from yesteryear who was suddenly and unexpectedly a trending hashtag on Twitter.  None of these people were fighting a terminal diagnosis or dealing with “The Big C”. They were just running around, living their lives, and then they weren’t.

Before COVID, before the vaccines, there was always the odd account of somebody dying unexpectedly – maybe one every couple of years. As you age, more people you know pass away, but usually there’s an arc to it: a diagnosis, a treatment, then the passing.  I knew one person who died “suddenly and unexpectedly” in January 2020, and it was the first sudden death in my circle in years.

I’m no statistician, but four people I know personally joining the ranks of the “sudden and unexpected” (three of them coronaries), within the span of a little over a year… well that seems a little weird. The reason I think these all have a common thread through them, is three of the four of these people, I would describe as ideologically committed to COVID. They all had their doses and in most cases, their boosters. One I’m unsure of, so all I have there is the sudden massive heart attack.

In my case, the number for the second question is four.

Which of your numbers is bigger?

Which number is larger for the number of people within your circle of friends, family, colleagues and acquaintances who:

A) died of COVID since 2020, or

B) were vaxxed and then died “Suddenly and Unexpectedly”

— Mark Jeftovic, The ₿itcoin Capitalist (@StuntPope) January 14, 2023

When will the corporate media face the music?

In the curious case of the corporate media we have an inversion of sorts which points at a type of hyper-normality in the world (the prevailing official narrative is so absurd and obviously untrue that it takes an act of intentional neurosis to believe it).

I remember when COVID hit, here in Canada there was this one video clip of a body being taken out of a house as announcers breathlessly hyperventilated about the spread of the virus. It was the same video clip and it was reused for weeks, months even.

What is the MSM not amplifying?

They are dutifully ignoring the wave of sudden deaths among our youngsters, children and even middle aged adults. We have video montages circulating on Youtube and Rumble of the endless barrage of people dropping during live streams and sporting events, but for some reason these aren’t being run on endless loop up by the MSM.

In the last few months this tempo of young adults dying suddenly seems to have quickened, and a requirement for being vaccinated or even boosted seems to be a common factor across many of them.

The phenomenon of athletes dropping on the field gives us a bit of a petri dish, because nearly all organized sporting leagues implemented a vaccine requirement on its athletes in order to participate.

I don’t want to cycle through the litany of victims of these tragedies. If you search them up via Google you’ll just get first page results of Reuters funded “fact-checks” explaining why the vaccines have nothing to do with it, or MSM pieces blaming this epidemic of “Sudden Adult Death Syndrome” on climate change and kids having heart attacks from playing video games.

Siri? Explain “gaslighting”

If you can wind your way through all the fact-checks and debunking, you can find the odd mainstream piece that actually looks at the possibility. In September, Science Magazine almost grudgingly admitted,

“COVID-19 vaccines do have a rare but worrisome cardiac side effect. Myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle that can cause chest pain and shortness of breath, has disproportionately struck older boys and young men who received the shots. Only one out of several thousand in those age groups is affected, and most quickly feel better. A tiny number of deaths have been tentatively linked to vaccine myocarditis around the world. But several new studies suggest the heart muscle can take months to heal, and some scientists worry about what this means for patients long term. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has ordered vaccinemakers Pfizer and Moderna to conduct a raft of studies to assess these risks.”

Baseless, my ass.

If you want to look at some actual data on Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting or actuarial data coming out of insurance companies, or actual peer reviewed research papers, or absolute excess mortality data comparing Covid to vaccine deployment, I  would recommend Edward Dowd’s “Cause Unknown”, which is a depressing read. From it we can just pull some raw data that presents a pretty compelling case that no matter what is really happening, ignoring it is an act of journalistic malpractice:

Via OpenVaers.com

We know now via the various Twitter Files dumps that Big Tech has been taking their orders from the government, intelligence agencies and Big Pharma (a.k.a The Pharmatrocracy) all along. Should we just assume the corporate press has been as well?

This would explain why instead of undertaking Watergate level investigative reporting into legions of children, athletes and young adults suddenly dropping dead or having heart attacks, strokes and other medical emergencies, live on the air; we’re getting gaslighted about childhood asthma from natural gas stoves.

Let’s just bang rocks together from now on.
MSM beyond salvation at this point. https://t.co/scZ2iBXPkj

— Mark Jeftovic, The ₿itcoin Capitalist (@StuntPope) January 12, 2023

I have been wondering if it is possible that the perceived increase in these reports of sudden deaths is the result of a self-perpetuating loop of increased focus on these events. A kind of hysteria of its own. This is why since the onset of COVID, I’ve always tried to find numbers and data – then I follow that data where it leads me.  Often times it’s not the same place as what I’m seeing on the television screen.

Anybody can look at a graph, and provided that the data is kosher, see when something is out of whack.

This one is out of Dowd’s book and sourced with CDC data is the aggregate excess mortality rate for millennials since before the pandemic.

We know that the survival rate from COVID goes up dramatically as age comes down. The vast majority of COVID fatalities were in our elderly (many of whom were forced into localized outbreaks where they died locked down and alone).

Two things stand out:

#1) The excess death rates spike higher as the vaccines deploy, reaching their highest when mandates kick in

#2) The trend line is going the wrong direction.

Since the vaccine rollout started, the narrative around them shifted quite radically. Here’s another graph from Cause Unknown, I added the annotations (somewhat off-the-cuff, I will admit, but the overall beats are 100% accurate):

It’s the deaths attributed to COVID before and after the rollout. The vaccines were supposed to effectively drive that to zero. These shots were pitched to the public as a magic bullet, the original announcements were of “95% efficacy” (on a virus we knew by then, had a 99.95% survival rate).

It turns out now, that not only does the vaccine not confer immunity (it was more expedient to change the meaning of the word “vaccine” instead), they didn’t even test if it reduced transmission (if you try to search up either of these, you just get more pages of “fact check” articles admonishing you that whatever it is you’re looking for, it’s a nothing-burger….)

Thanks, Fact Checkers.

The entire point of  the vaccine mandates was the premise that “the vaccines stopped transmission”. Everybody said this. They are now telling you they didn’t say this, and the media, with the complicity of Big Tech are telling you it never mattered.

How can anybody be faulted for not knowing what to believe or who to trust?

With the conventional narratives being so ephemeral and one “conspiracy theory” after another being validated (lockdowns, lab leak, vaccine passports…) is it any wonder people are becoming skeptical or outright distrustful of our institutions and media?

The tempo of sudden deaths and tragedies seems to be quantifiably increasing, but policy makers, pundits and the media are mostly doubling down on vaccinations.

This article claims that before 2021 the average annual number of athletes collapsing on the field was 29, and that since 2021 that’s blown out to 1,652 (and counting). For the sake of balance, here’s the AP Fact Check telling you “there’s nothing to see here”, saying, this number “simply cites a blog, goodsciencing.com, for that figure”.

The GoodSciencing article itself derives that number from media reports of each individual incident – and has a footnote with an attribution and a link for every one, all 1,652 of them.

We’re one tragedy away from pitchforks and torches

The disconnect between what the average person on the street is seeing happen right before their eyes and what they’re being told is happening (or not happening) by paternalistic fact-checking media propagandists will soon come to a breaking point.

The only thing that can stop it is for some policymakers and pundits to start throwing the engine brake and try to get out in front of what will be an inevitable public backlash. My fear is this won’t happen.

There is too much invested: the entire regime of Digital IDs and health passports was to be built atop the COVID vaccine deployment.  Vaxports were supposed to be the official lubricant of The Great Reset. If it turns out that these things are not only ineffective but harmful, it will set The Fourth Industrial Revolution back decades.

It’s going to take a long time to rebuild public trust and probably not while any incumbents are still in office.

There are glimmers of rationality returning, where we are beginning to see some institutions reverse course instead of doubling down:

• My alma mater, University of Western Ontario unexpectedly scrapped their vaccine mandate a few weeks after two students died suddenly in October and November. UWO not only required students to be vaccinated in order to attend on-campus classes, they even required at least one booster.

• The US military ended all vaccine mandates last week.

• York Region (part of the Greater Toronto Area) also ended their vaccine mandate last week. The City of Toronto this past November.

What I hope is that the tempo of this return to rationality accelerates, and mandatory vaccines are a thing of the past. Otherwise the risk increases that some kind of “George Floyd” moment occurs first. That’s when a particularly vivid tragedy strikes for all to see and it ignites the pent-up resentment, distrust and hostility into outright rage.

That won’t be good for anybody. We know what happened when the French people were told “to eat cake” until they hit a breaking point. The Terrors. Nobody was safe, the violence was undiscerning and total.

The choice we have today is between a complete moratorium on vaccine mandates and some kind of “truth and reconciliation” process to try and earn back the public trust, or something that more closely resembles pitchforks and torches (not to mention guillotines).

I think we’d all prefer the former.

*  *  *

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