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Daily Missive

Last Bear Standing

Loading ...Bill Bonner

January 17, 2025 • 3 minute, 33 second read


Bear marketsfartcoin

Last Bear Standing
~~ Bill Bonner, Bonner Private Research

‘Behind every great fortune is a crime,’ wrote Balzac. On January 29, 2018, YouTube watchers were seeing one.

Down the highway rolled a sleek 18-wheeler,a heavy truck that promised not to destroy the planet. It was the creation of Trevor Milton and his hot-shot company, Nikola.

Trouble was, the video was a fake. The motive force was gravity, not Nikola’s advanced technology. The truck wasn’t running on its own power; it had none. It was just coasting down the hill.

For a while, the stock boomed. It rose to over $2,000 a share in June, 2020. Milton was a billionaire. But it now trades around $1.

A lot happened between $2,000 and $1. Among them, Trevor Milton got a four-year prison sentence.

MarketRealist.com:

A video purportedly showing a zero-emission truck in motion turned out to be fake and a court later found the ex-founder and chairman of Nikola Corporation guilty of defrauding investors by misleading them about the company’s technological capabilities to artificially inflate its stock price. Milton was convicted of one count of securities fraud and two counts of wire fraud. The judge sentenced him to four years in prison along with a fine of $1 million.

According to Wall Street lore, a bull market will continue “until the last bear gives up.”

In 2023, famous bear short-seller Jim Chanos gave up. The Financial Times reported:

One of Wall Street’s best-known bears, Jim Chanos, has told his backers he is closing his main short-focused hedge funds after more than three decades. Chanos is best-known for his bet against Enron, the energy trader that collapsed in 2001… In a letter to investors seen by the Financial Times, Chanos wrote: “It is no secret that the long/short equity business model has come under pressure and interest in fundamental stock pickers has waned.”

Waned?!

Investors not interested in fundamental research?

Why bother with real research when you can get 25% (the S&P gain, 2024) for not doing it? Nvidia rose 171% last year, while the S&P 500 itself was up 25%. Fundamental research would have steered you away from both. In terms of value, neither looked like a good deal.

And this week, Hindenburg Research — which had revealed the fraud at Nikola — has thrown in the towel too. Reuters:

Hindenburg Research’s founder said he would disband the firm whose reports sparked heavy selling by investors and investigations by authorities, wiping billions from the market values of companies including India’s Adani Group and U.S.-based Nikola.

In a normal stock market, some companies do well; their stocks go up. Some don’t do so well; their stocks go down. Researchers try to figure out — in advance — which are which. Good research pays off.

But a normal stock market is fairly stable. As one company earns more, it takes sales from another company, which earns less. As one company cuts costs, it cuts income to other companies. Overall, the stock market doesn’t rise, or fall, very much. Because total purchasing power rises slowly, with GDP… at only around 3% per year. A stock market surge of 25% is unnatural, implausible… and suspect.

But a stock market juiced by the Fed… by hype… by hope… and tech ‘aspirations’… is a whole different thing. Real investors disappear; in come the clowns and gamblers.

How else to explain Fartcoin? The cryptocurrency made its debut in October. By December it had a value of $1.2 billion,which is a lot of pay for something of no known utility. But it was a perfect meme investment,created anonymously and said to have something to do with Elon Musk’s interest in the sounds of flatulence.

No use trying to do research on that one. There is nothing to research — no earnings, no profits, no business, no assets, no balance sheet, no audited financial reports, no CEO or parking lot attendant… no hush money… no lobbying expenses… no hanky panky in the office, no executive travel… no company logo. No nothing. Even gravity seems to be missing.

Maybe Hindenburg was the ‘last bear.’ Maybe not. But when Ursa Ultima finally gives up, we predict, the need for sharp pencils, green eye-shades, sober judgement and a gimlet glance will soon come back into fashion.

More to come…

Regards,

Bill Bonner, Bonner Private Research



Plowshares into Swords

September 15, 2025 • Bill Bonner

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?

Plowshares into Swords
The Shadow Fed Rises

September 15, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

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 Shadow Fed Rises
U.S. Government Spent 51% More Than It Took In Last Month

September 15, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

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.

U.S. Government Spent 51% More Than It Took In Last Month
Porter Stansberry: A Repeat of MicroStrategy’s +2,400% Return

September 12, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

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.

Porter Stansberry: A Repeat of MicroStrategy’s +2,400% Return