A Nation of Day Traders

With all eyes on today’s CPI read, which tells us inflation is slowly ticking up again, it’s a good idea to wonder why we care about a 0.1% move in any direction.

How did this monthly data point become so important?

One big reason is that we’ve become a nation of impulsive, quick traders, not investors. High-frequency trading algorithms don’t help.

But it wasn’t always this way. Investors used to hold their average stock holding for years, just a generation ago:

Turn Your Images On

So, what turned America into a nation of traders? Cheaper transaction costs are a big reason. Fees earned from Robinhood accounts make up a major revenue stream for Citadel, Wall Street’s largest hedge fund.

Lower tax rates on capital gains, especially under Trump’s tax regime, have pushed investors towards faster-growth companies, which naturally lead them to take quick profits.

At Grey Swan, we’ve built a robust Model Portfolio designed to benefit from stocks that can rise for years at a time… and pay dividends along the way. We include long-term holdings such as gold and silver — hard assets that have stood the test of time — along with the new kid on the block, bitcoin.

Our research often reveals shorter-term trades related to trends like AI, soaring uranium demand, and the surprising opportunity in American natural gas right now.

We don’t need to trade every data point. However, following long and medium-term trends has proven to be profitable over time. And a lot less stressful.

~ Addison

P.S. Tomorrow, we’ll look at a Grey Swan event in the making: the rise of drone warfare and its meaning and the remaking of the American defense industry. John Robb, former advisor to the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff on netwar, will join us for Grey Swan Live! to share the latest on how drones are actively being deployed in Ukraine and will figure in the Golden Dome. We’ll also discuss investment opportunities these innovations will spawn in the private sector.

Andrew’s also planning to attend the Rule Investment Symposium in Boca Raton on July 7-11, 2025.

The Symposium is a five-day affair featuring in-depth research from dozens of small-cap resource companies, including gold and silver mining companies – but also copper, uranium, and other critical commodities we’ve explored in-depth in our research over the past year. Click here to attend and meet your future cutting-edge resource investments face-to-face.

As always, your reader feedback is welcome: feedback@greyswanfraternity.com (We read all emails. Thanks in advance for your contribution.)

With all eyes on today’s CPI read, which tells us inflation is slowly ticking up again, it’s a good idea to wonder why we care about a 0.1% move in any direction.

How did this monthly data point become so important?

One big reason is that we’ve become a nation of impulsive, quick traders, not investors. High-frequency trading algorithms don’t help.

But it wasn’t always this way. Investors used to hold their average stock holding for years, just a generation ago:

Turn Your Images On

Lower tax rates on capital gains, especially under Trump’s tax regime, have pushed investors towards faster-growth companies, which naturally lead them to take quick profits.

Our research often reveals shorter-term trades related to trends like AI, soaring uranium demand, and the surprising opportunity in American natural gas right now.

We don’t need to trade every data point. However, following long and medium-term trends has proven to be profitable over time. And a lot less stressful.

~ Addison

Andrew’s also planning to attend the Rule Investment Symposium in Boca Raton on July 7-11, 2025.

As always, your reader feedback is welcome: feedback@greyswanfraternity.com (We read all emails. Thanks in advance for your contribution.)

The empire is in decline. Demographics, regulatory tightening, fake money and the mis-allocation of trillions of dollars (much of it on pointless wars) have sapped the vitality of the economy. The Federal government gets bigger and bigger, but there is no longer enough output to pay for it.

The interest on the debt alone takes more more than a trillion dollars a year. The US faces a financial crisis. And for the first time in history, our children face a poorer future.

The welfare state model no longer works; the center — consensual democracy — wobbles towards the extremes. What to do? Beat our plowshares into swords?

A separate University of Chicago poll warned that political interference would push up U.S. borrowing costs and raise risk premia on government debt.

And yet, trust is draining away.

In 2001, amid the turmoil of the tech wreck meltdown on Wall Street, Gallup found 74% of Americans had confidence Alan Greenspan would “do the right thing.”

In 2025, only 37% say the same of Jerome Powell. For the first time since Trump and Powell shared the stage, more Americans trust Trump than Powell to steer the economy.

That does not bode well for Fed independence.

The government spent more than half of the money again, as much as it earned last month. Imagine how long spending like that would last if it were your family budget.

As Bitcoin’s price has risen, it now trades for around $115,000, MicroStrategy’s stock has experienced an even greater parabolic rise.

Today the company, renamed Strategy, has a market cap of $103 billion – and investors have seen returns of more than 2,400% in a little over 5 years.

It’s one of the greatest growth stories of recent years and one that almost nobody could have seen coming.

For anyone who has ridden the MicroStrategy gravy train, congratulations.

And for those who missed it, I believe you could have a rare second chance.