The Passive Bid Has Already Come for Crypto

One of the most important trends underpinning markets today is the passive bid.

That’s simply the term for the fact that money comes into the market. If you’re participating in a 401(k) plan, you’re part of the passive bid. Each payday, the money that gets deducted from your paycheck goes into your investment funds.

In turn, that money moves down to individual stocks that get bought up. Payday after payday after payday.

In time, this trend could reverse. A rising unemployment rate. Higher withdrawals from retirees from stocks as they shift to bonds.

Until that shift changes, it’s a structural reason why stocks are the best game in town – and why investors should buy market pullbacks.

Today, the passive bid is also drawing capital to crypto. Just consider how Vanguard’s small-cap ETFs are regular buyers of Strategy:

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Vanguard’s Strategy holdings now top 8% of the company – and rising

Strategy – formerly MicroStrategy, until its market cap hit $100 billion – is best known today for aggressively buying bitcoin and holding it. Given that Strategy is in a number of funds, there’s already passive money flowing to shares today.

The money flowing to Strategy could soar even higher if the company is added to the S&P 500 later in the year.

For now, we prefer bitcoin to Strategy, given that shares trade at a premium to their bitcoin holdings. With positive crypto legislation on deck from Congress this week, however, expect both bitcoin and Strategy shares to add to their recent gains.

~ Andrew

This is Elon Musk’s Next Tech Disruption…

And it could turn the entire AI market upside down.

Click here to see the details and learn how to prepare.

P.S. We see cryptocurrencies as a key part of President Trump’s Great Reset plan. However, it’s more likely that stablecoins, rather than bitcoin, Ethereum or the like, will get the most attention in the coming months.

Stablecoins take a dollar, issue a token, and then the process is reversed at some point. But stablecoins also invest those dollars into U.S. Treasurys. With stablecoin demand increasing, it could become the lynchpin for refinancing America’s debt at a reasonable interest rate.

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

One of the most important trends underpinning markets today is the passive bid.

In turn, that money moves down to individual stocks that get bought up. Payday after payday after payday.

In time, this trend could reverse. A rising unemployment rate. Higher withdrawals from retirees from stocks as they shift to bonds.

Until that shift changes, it’s a structural reason why stocks are the best game in town – and why investors should buy market pullbacks.

Today, the passive bid is also drawing capital to crypto. Just consider how Vanguard’s small-cap ETFs are regular buyers of Strategy:

Turn Your Images On

Vanguard’s Strategy holdings now top 8% of the company – and rising

The money flowing to Strategy could soar even higher if the company is added to the S&P 500 later in the year.

~ Andrew

This is Elon Musk’s Next Tech Disruption…

And it could turn the entire AI market upside down.

Click here to see the details and learn how to prepare.

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

Gold has led people to do the most brilliant, the most brave, the most inventive, the most innovative and the most terrible things. ‘More men have been knocked off balance by gold than by love,’ runs the saying, usually attributed to Benjamin Disraeli. Where gold is concerned, emotion, not logic, prevails. Even in today’s markets it is a speculative asset whose price is driven by greed and fear, not by fundamental production numbers.

Fresh GDP data — the Commerce Department revised Q2 growth upward to 3.3% — fueling the rally. Investors cheered the “Goldilocks” read: strong enough to keep the music going, not hot enough (at least on paper) to derail hopes for a Fed pivot.

Even the oddball tickers joined in. Perhaps as fittingly as Lego, Build-A-Bear Workshop popped after beating earnings forecasts, on track for its fifth consecutive record year, thanks to digital expansion.

Neither represents a bellwether of industrial might — but in this market, even teddy bears roar.

In modern finance theory, only U.S. T-bills are considered risk-free assets.

Central banks are telling us they believe the real risk-free asset is gold.

Our Grey Swan research shows exactly how the dynamic between government finance and gold is playing out in real time.

When we compare apples to apples—median home prices to median household income, both annualized—we get a much more nuanced picture. Housing has indeed become less affordable, with the price-to-income ratio climbing from roughly 3.5 in 1984 to about 5.3 today. In other words, the typical American family now has to work much harder to afford the same home.

But notice something crucial: the steepest increases coincide precisely with periods of massive government intervention. The post-dot-com bubble recovery fueled by Fed easy money after 2001. The housing bubble inflated by government-backed mortgages and Fannie Mae shenanigans. The recent explosion driven by unprecedented monetary stimulus and COVID lockdown policies.

Neither represents a bellwether of industrial might — but in this market, even teddy bears roar.

In modern finance theory, only U.S. T-bills are considered risk-free assets.

Central banks are telling us they believe the real risk-free asset is gold.

Our Grey Swan research shows exactly how the dynamic between government finance and gold is playing out in real time.