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:

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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.)

By then the receipts on my desk had arranged themselves into a sort of chorus. I heard, faintly, another refrain—one from Kentucky. In the first days of the shutdown, Senator Rand Paul stood alone among Republicans and voted against his party’s stopgap, telling interviewers that the numbers “don’t add up” and that he would not sign on to another year that piles $2 trillion onto the debt.

That, I realized, is what the tariff story shares with the broader budget theater: the habit of calling a tax something else, of shifting burdens into the fog and then celebrating the silhouette as victory. Even the vote tally made the point: he was the only Republican “no,” a lonely arithmetic lesson in a crowded room.

Senator Rand Paul, (R. KY), who was the sole Republican to vote against a continuing resolution, seems to care about the actual finances of the government. “I would never vote for a bill that added $2 trillion in national debt,” Paul said in various interviews over the weekend.

The $2 trillion he’s referring to is the lesser of two proposals made by the national parties… and would accrue during this next fiscal year.

Oy.

We liked what Liz Wolfe at Reason wrote on Friday, so we’ll repeat it here: “One of the dirty little secrets of every shutdown is that everything remains mostly fine. Private markets could easily replace many federal functions.”

It’s a strange kind of confidence — one where Wall Street soars while Washington goes dark.

The Liberal Democratic Party victory has sent Japanese stocks soaring, as party President Sanae Takaichi – now set to become Japan’s first female Prime Minister – is a proponent of stimulus spending, and a China hawk. The electoral win is a vote to keep the yen carry trade alive… and well.

The “yen carry trade” is a currency trading strategy. By borrowing Japanese yen at low interest rates and investing in higher-yielding assets, investors have profited from the interest rate differential. Yen carry trades have played a huge role in global liquidity for decades.

Frankly, we’re disappointed — not because of the carry trade but because the crowd got this one so wrong!

Back in the Global Financial Crisis (2008), we recall mass layoffs were driving desperation.

Today, unemployment is relatively low, if climbing.

Affordability is much more of an issue. Food, rent, healthcare, and childcare are all rising faster than wages. Households aren’t jobless; they’re stretched. Job “quits” are at crisis-level lows.

In addition to the top 10% of earners, consumer spending is still strong. Not necessarily because of prosperity, but because households are taking extra shifts, hustling gigs, working late into the night, and using credit cards. The trends hold up demand but hollow out savings.

It’s the quiet form of financial repression. In an era of fiscal dominance, savers see easy returns clipped, workers stretch hours just to stay even, and wealth slips upward into assets while daily life grows harder to afford.

The $2 trillion he’s referring to is the lesser of two proposals made by the national parties… and would accrue during this next fiscal year.

Oy.

It’s a strange kind of confidence — one where Wall Street soars while Washington goes dark.

Frankly, we’re disappointed — not because of the carry trade but because the crowd got this one so wrong!

Back in the Global Financial Crisis (2008), we recall mass layoffs were driving desperation.

Today, unemployment is relatively low, if climbing.