The Pomp Letter

To investors, Ray Dalio said the famous phrase “cash is trash” on national television in 2020. He was warning market participants that inflation was coming and anyone sitting in US dollars would be destroyed by the currency debasement. Take a listen: Ray Dalio was right in hindsight. The Federal Reserve kept interest rates artificially suppressed at 0% for too long, while the government continued...

To investors, The Federal Reserve decided not to cut interest rates yesterday. I believe this is a mistake on their part and is another data point proving the Fed is continuously behind the curve when it comes to monetary policy in the modern age. If you remember, the central bank didn’t raise interest rates until inflation was already out of control during the pandemic. We eventually saw inflatio...

To investors, The US government established the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve recently and many in the crypto community were upset because no new purchases of bitcoin were announced. If America finds it valuable to hold the bitcoin we already have in our possession, we should also find it valuable to buy more. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing. Thankfully, the President’s Executive Order was wel...

To investors, Government spending is out of control. We already knew that, but now we have data that suggests the problem is getting worse and at an alarming pace. Our friends at Geiger Capital were rightfully outraged at the February spending deficit: “In the month of February, the US Government collected $297 Billion. Just one problem… They spent $605 Billion. A $308 BILLION deficit. In one mont...

To investors, Don’t read mainstream financial news headlines today. If you do, you will be told the world is ending and the market is crashing. You will see doom and gloom everywhere. If you aren’t careful, you may believe that asset prices are destined to fall forever and your portfolio will never recover. This is all nonsense though. Another way to describe the current market is that the S&P 500...

To investors, The big question in financial markets over the last two weeks has been “is Donald Trump intentionally trying to tank the US stock market?” This would have been an absurd question before the inauguration. The general thought process was President Trump is a businessman and investor. He measures the health of the US economy through the stock market performance, so you can expect the st...

To investors, President Trump signed an Executive Order last night in the Oval Office to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. This is a monumental milestone for bitcoin — the nation states have officially arrived. There have been a few countries like El Salvador and Bhutan that previously embraced the digital currency, but America is the big dog and their entrance into the global accumulation ra...

Today’s letter is brought to you by Osprey Funds ! The Osprey BNB Chain Trust (OBNB) is the first U.S. tradable ticker for BNB and provides secure exposure to BNB right from your brokerage account—no custodial wallets or private keys required. Due to its unavailability on centralized exchanges in the U.S., OBNB offers one of the only paths for U.S. investors to access BNB exposure via USD. To inve...

To investors, We have entered the Age of Economic Chaos. It seems like each day brings a new announcement, a new decision, or a new action. Rather than a simple, predictable plan being executed, President Trump and his administration are moving fast and breaking things. His critics see this strategy as detrimental to the US economy and America’s position globally. His supporters are applauding the...

To investors, The big news over the weekend was President Trump announced his intention to create a crypto strategic reserve for the United States. While there were plenty of surprises in the details of how this will be implemented, the idea of a crypto-related reserve had been rumored for weeks. Trump posted on Truth Social the following message: The internet immediately exploded in hot takes, bu...

To investors, The United States of America is open for business. We voted a real estate developer and famed businessman into office. He has appointed everyone from Elon Musk to Howard Lutnick to Scott Bessent as members of his team to help change the economic status of the country. The plan is to increase government revenue, decrease government spending, weaken the US dollar, and bring the 10-year...

Today’s letter is brought to you by Osprey Funds ! The Osprey BNB Chain Trust (OBNB) is the first U.S. tradable ticker for BNB and provides secure exposure to BNB right from your brokerage account—no custodial wallets or private keys required. Due to its unavailability on centralized exchanges in the U.S., OBNB offers one of the only paths for U.S. investors to access BNB exposure via USD. To inve...

To investors, I remember sitting in economics class during college wondering what it would have been like to live through Bretton Woods or the Plaza Accord . Both events had significant impacts on national currencies, asset prices and the macro environment. But we should be careful what we wish for. Jim Bianco has recently popularized the idea of a “Mar-a-Lago Accord” that is already being put int...

READER NOTE : I have spent the last few years mostly managing balance sheet capital. There have been a few people who have reached out asking if they can invest with me or our investment firm. While I have not made a decision yet, I am increasingly open to the idea. As a way to gauge interest, I made this Google Form. If you are interested in potentially investing alongside me in the deals we do,...

To investors, Howard Lutnick, the new Secretary of Commerce, was on television last night discussing the administration’s goal of eliminating federal income tax. This is the type of big, bold thinking that can change the direction of a country. Here is the clip: It is important to understand what appears to be the playbook. DOGE is focused on cutting $2 trillion from the government budget. That wo...

To investors, The widely quoted annual deficit number is $2 trillion. In layman terms, the United States spends $2 trillion more than we pull in as revenue. That is obviously not good. But we got even worse news recently. The US government is not running a $2 trillion deficit. They are actually running a ~ $2.5 trillion deficit based on the annual run rate from the first four months of the 2025 fi...

To investors, The crypto industry has become essential to national security. That is one of my big takeaways from the first press conference held by Crypto and AI Czar David Sacks. Most people are focused on the strategic bitcoin reserve, which I believe will happen in 2025, but that is not the most interesting part of Sacks’ focus from my perspective. The bitcoin reserve will help the United Stat...

To investors, President Trump fulfilled his campaign promise of implementing tariffs on Canada and Mexico over the weekend. This comes after majority of the country voted for Trump to assume office and implement his America First strategy. Tariffs, especially the blanket tariffs that were implemented in the last 48 hours, are one of the most controversial parts of the America First strategy. Most...

Today’s Letter Is Brought To You By Consensus: Hong Kong. The world’s most ambitious builders and boldest investors are coming to Consensus Hong Kong (Feb. 18-20, 2025) to make connections and shape the future of digital assets. Whether you’re focused on Bitcoin’s evolution or the latest breakthroughs in Web3 and DeFi, this is where the industry does business. Here’s a glimpse of what’s in store:...

Today’s letter is brought to you by Bitcoin Investor Week! I am hosting Bitcoin Investor Week in New York City from February 24-28th. It is the largest annual meeting for sophisticated Wall Street investors who are interested in bitcoin. Speakers include Cathie Wood, Vivek Ramaswamy, Mike Novogratz, Senator Cynthia Lummis, Jan van Eck, Anthony Scaramucci, Jack Mallers, Natalie Brunell, and many mo...

Today’s Letter Is Brought To You By Consensus: Hong Kong. The world’s most ambitious builders and boldest investors are coming to Consensus Hong Kong (Feb. 18-20, 2025) to make connections and shape the future of digital assets. Whether you’re focused on Bitcoin’s evolution or the latest breakthroughs in Web3 and DeFi, this is where the industry does business. Here’s a glimpse of what’s in store:...

To investors, The state of financial markets have been changing for the last 15 years. The Federal Reserve’s decision to conduct massive quantitative easing during the Global Financial Crisis broke the market and things have not been the same since. But the way investors interact with the market has also been evolving over time too. There has been a rise of self-directed investors, who are investo...

To investors, This morning CPI was reported right in-line with market expectations at 2.9% year-over-year. The big surprise came from core CPI, which was estimated to be at 3.3% and instead came in at 3.2%. Adam Kobeissi and his team pointed out that immediately S&P 500 futures surge over +85 points when the report hit. This response is interesting because it highlights the complexity of the situa...

To investors, There is only one chart that is dictating financial markets right now. You can watch it exclusively and essentially tell where markets are headed for the next week or two. Global liquidity. It really is that simple. Stanley Druckenmiller famously said “it’s liquidity that moves the market.” He is the GOAT for a reason. We know global liquidity has been dropping in recent weeks, so it...

To investors, Every once in awhile I come across a data point that surprises me. The latest surprise came from a chart comparing gold and US stocks over the last 25 years . If you had invested $10,000 in either asset two and a half decades ago, you would have ~$90,000 in gold and about $65,000 in US stocks. Yes, this includes dividends for US stocks too. Equities are supposed to outperform gold ov...