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Ripple Effect

A Vote For The Yen Carry Trade

Loading ...Addison Wiggin

October 6, 2025 • 1 minute, 53 second read

Japanpolymarket
A Vote For The Yen Carry Trade

We’ve followed Polymarket for over a year now.

There’s something about real people, betting in real-time about events that can tell you more than what the news headlines say.

These bets, which have sometimes amounted to millions of dollars, tend to send a clear signal. It’s a key reason why many members of the Grey Swan Investment Fraternity were able to forecast President Trump’s electoral college win last year.

However, Polymarket betters have finally got one bet wrong – Japan’s new Prime Minister:

Turn Your Images On

Wagers on Polymarket didn’t see Japan’s conservative party pull out its win over the weekend.
(Source: Polymarket)

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!

Time will tell how often Polymarket registers big misses. It’s still early days for the event-betting industry online. That said, we kind of liked the betting odds as a forecasting tool. No longer, eh?

~ Addison

 

P.S. Grey Swan Live! continues Thursday at 2 PM ET.

This week’s guest? You’re gonna love him. He’s a supply-side economist who has a decades-long track record of predicting future tech trends. We’re looking forward to picking his brain on the opportunities in AI today – and an eye on how much further the AI bubble can blow.

Who do you think it is? Send your guess to Feedback@GreySwanFraternity.com

We’ll send another hint this afternoon, with the big reveal tomorrow. But don’t wait to sign up and become a member – it just takes a few minutes.

If you have any questions for us about the market, send them our way now to: feedback@greyswanfraternity.com.

The Ghost of Bastiat

October 6, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

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.

The Ghost of Bastiat
The Dollar’s Long Goodbye

October 6, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

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 Dollar’s Long Goodbye
Beware: The Permanent Underclass

October 3, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

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.

Beware: The Permanent Underclass
Is Tokenization Inevitable?

October 3, 2025 • Ian King

Last month, Nasdaq asked the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for approval to let tokenized stocks and ETFs trade on its main exchange.

If approved, these digital shares would sit side-by-side with traditional equities. Meaning, they would fall under the same U.S. securities laws that govern $50 trillion in annual equity trades.

And this rollout could begin as early as 2026, once the Depository Trust Company — the clearinghouse that settles every U.S. stock trade — updates its systems to handle digital tokens.

If it happens, this won’t be a small tweak to the machinery of finance. It’ll represent the first major step toward moving Wall Street onto blockchain infrastructure.

And we don’t have to imagine what it might look like…

Because it’s already happening.

Is Tokenization Inevitable?