From the creators of The Daily Reckoning, I.O.U.S.A, Empire of Debt and The Daily Missive
From the creators of The Daily Reckoning, I.O.U.S.A, Empire of Debt and The Daily Missive
November 19, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
On the next Grey Swan Live!…
November 24, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
New York Fed President John Williams gave traders a holiday treat on Friday, admitting there may be “room for a further adjustment.”
Futures traders promptly lifted the odds of a December rate cut to nearly 75%, up from 40% just a week ago.
Two consecutive cuts in September and October have already greased the rails. If the Fed goes for a third, the “Santa Powell Rally” may arrive early.
November 21, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
November 20, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
November 24, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
Institutional investors are more interested in the crypto technology ecosystem – stablecoins and blockchain technology.
Rapid retail-driven four-year cycles are slowly giving way to longer cycles tied to market liquidity and economic trends.
November 21, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
November 20, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
November 21, 2025 • Ian King
The narrative for BTC and other cryptocurrencies is that every government around the world has high debt-to-GDP ratios. It means they are going to print more currency. It means there is a need for alternative currency. In the past, this alternative currency was gold.
Gold is not very portable. It’s a good store of value. It’s not as great of a store of value as BTC in terms of actually storing it. BTC, you can store it on a hard drive or at Coinbase. Gold, if you have bars you have to keep them in a bank or you have to dig a hole in your backyard. And you can’t send gold around the world as easily as you can send BTC.
I still think this rally has legs. If you go back to where the breakout happened, we were really in November of 2024 that was the beginning of this bull market in my mind because that was the first time we hit an all-time high in a couple years. Then we rallied. We pulled back. We tested that level again.
The uptrend, in my mind and with what I’m seeing, is still intact. We’re just in an oversold condition right now.
November 20, 2025 • Ian King
Every major tech shift has followed a similar pattern. As information moves faster, the money follows.
The telegraph made news global and opened up a world of investment opportunities. Radio, and then television, ignited a new wave of prosperity for investors. And the internet made communication instant, creating fortunes for those who saw what was coming.
Now standards like x402 are doing the same for AI and digital payments, potentially putting Jamie Dimon’s empire in jeopardy.
If you have Coinbase building the payment rails, Circle handling settlement and projects like Worldcoin and Particle Network solving for identity and wallets — do you really need a bank to validate transactions and keep track of who owns what?
All of these companies are helping to build a new layer of fintech infrastructure. And they’re all working toward an economy that runs continuously, without the need for corporate scaffolding.
November 19, 2025 • Ian King
On November 10, Coinbase announced a new platform that lets users buy crypto tokens before they list on the exchange.
The company calls it: “a more sustainable and transparent way for projects to distribute tokens.”
In other words, we’re moving into ICO 2.0. But this time there will be more rules.
November 19, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
We’ve lived through the greatest borrowing binge in modern history, and yet the national mood feels poorer, more brittle, less confident.
There’s a familiar pattern here: the higher the noise, the more critical it becomes to tune it out. The markets will surge and swoon, the political class will posture, and commentators will insist that this time is different.
Our biggest concern, meanwhile, is that with a collapsing stock market, economic anxiety will reach fever highs. And with it the political divide in the country will become even more performative, expressive and violent.
Civil society cannot sustain a credit crisis.
The real work — the only work that actually matters — happens at the level of your own finances, your own decisions, your own family. No administration, blue or red, can insulate you from a balance sheet that doesn’t balance.
November 19, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
Timber is among several commodities declining this year. Oil, down 15%. Wheat minus 10%. Egg prices have gotten over the avian flu and are down 80%.
Lower commodity costs are good for consumers. They offset tariff costs to wholesalers. And they are good for this year’s political pet issue, “affordability.”
But they also reflect a sore spot in the overall economy. Lower demand for timber, a key component in housing, means builders aren’t building.
Many economists interpret lower timber prices as a sign that the economy is already in recession.
November 18, 2025 • Mark Jeftovic
Bitcoin isn’t a trade and trying to time it with chart patterns generally does not work.
I’ve never really felt like technical analysis carried much real predictive edge in general and when it comes to BTC, I’ve seen too many failed “death crosses” to change my opinion.
The one that just triggered in mid-November as bitcoin flirted with $90,000 is just the latest.
What really matters? It’s a monetary regime change – if market participants are trading anything it’s getting rid of a currency (“it’s the denominator, stupid”) for a store of value – and we’re seeing it in spades with Bitcoin and gold.
November 18, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
White-collar hiring is, in fact, slowing. Engel’s Pause is taking hold of the jobs picture.
In the meantime, everyday Americans are rediscovering an ancient truth: there is wisdom in wearing steel-toed boots.
Jobs that struggle to attract bodies in boom times are now seeing stampedes of applicants.
– Georgia’s Department of Corrections: applications up 40%.
– The U.S. military: reached 2025 recruiting goals early.
– Waste management staffing: applications up 50%.
For now, economists call this “labor market tightness.” Anyone who has ever scrubbed a grease trap knows it by another name: fear.
November 18, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
Bitcoin has historically weathered 30%+ corrections while still in a bull market.
Global liquidity fears and lower odds of a Fed rate cut in December are driving bitcoin and other cryptos lower at present.
As Andrew Zatlin described on Thursday’s Live! we can expect a series of stimulus efforts next year, ahead of the midterms, driving new liquidity. The $2,000 “tariff rebate” checks President Trump has been touting are but one example.
When higher liquidity hits the market – in whatever form it takes – today’s bitcoin buyers will be waiting.
Make like the whales, and use market selloffs and stimulus to your advantage.
November 17, 2025 • Andrew Packer
The market seems to know something about private credit that we don’t. And in a big enough liquidity event for private credit, investors will have to sell off more liquid assets if they want capital.
That’s the danger private credit poses today, exactly at a time when rules are being eased to make it easier for retail investors like us to buy into this asset class.
I’m in the camp that this smells like a way to keep the party going by providing another source of liquidity – the passive investment flows from your regular 401(k) contributions. The smell takes on a sour note as this sector starts to falter.
Perhaps today’s selloff is simply a reaction to declining interest rates, the growth of private credit, and a few inevitable deals that have gone sour recently.
November 17, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
More money sloshing around in the system means daily life has gotten more expensive. Not rocket science.
We’ve all observed certain goods — TVs, laptops, the gadgets we don’t need but buy anyway — keep getting cheaper, often while getting better.
But the Big Four killers of household budgets: healthcare, housing, childcare, and education, are marching upward like a military parade.
Add Biden-era price-level stickiness and Trump-era tariffs whose full effects haven’t even landed yet, and you get the stew voters have been choking down.
