QTR’s Fringe Finance

Multiple outlets published a look at President Donald Trump’s stock trades for June, a sprawling disclosure encompassing more than 1,000 purchases and sales across stocks, bonds and ETFs. The obvious temptation is to comb through every line looking for some hidden message about what Trump thinks markets, interest rates or individual companies are about to do.

Nobody knows exactly where the breaking point is, but we are getting closer to finding out. The 10 year Treasury ended the week around 4.7%, while the 30 year pushed above 5.3%. Washington intervened with larger Treasury buybacks, yields briefly fell, and then the selling resumed. So much for throwing a match to try and dry up the ocean of free market bond trading that takes place globally. For years, markets have asked how high interest rates can go before something breaks.

Tesla has reportedly discontinued its Solar Roof, according to electrek, and the timing could hardly be more perfect for a point I was making just a few days ago about Elon Musk’s increasingly consolidated corporate empire.

It’s a great morning to crank “No Brakes” by The Offspring. Why? Because the United States government has officially blown through $40 trillion in national debt, another milestone that would almost be impressive if it weren’t so outright grotesque. Our debt machine literally has “no brakes”.

One name I’ve repeatedly warned about and just put on my 9 Stocks I Keep Out Of My Portfolios list saw its story get even uglier this week…at a time where I didn’t even think it was possible.

This page organizes my bullish watchlists into two broad buckets: Core Bullish and Speculative Bullish. The Core Bullish bucket is intended to represent higher-conviction, generally lower-risk names, while the Speculative Bullish bucket contains ideas with greater risk, volatility or uncertainty, but potentially greater upside.

I have been gently touching on what a horrible idea one sector has been since the inception of this blog. And just this week, it looks like cracks are starting to form in the space via one of its largest and most well-known publicly traded companies. As savings finally dry up, rates remain higher and auto loan/credit card delinquencies start rising, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a deluge of ugliness from these types of names in their next few quarterly reports.

Well, that didn’t take long. Less than 24 hours after I wrote that soaring bond yields in the United States and Japan were one of the major reasons I thought the AI bubble could finally begin breaking later this year and into 2027, global markets woke up Tuesday morning and decided to provide a helpful visual aid.

Why the hell would anyone own MSTR right now? That is becoming an increasingly difficult question to answer. MSTR looks to me to have been nothing more than the red-headed stepchild of the Strategy capital structure: the security everyone is willing to sacrifice to make sure everything and everyone else is taken care of. Bitcoin is protected. The preferred securities are supported. The dollar reserve is being built to cover preferred dividends and debt interest.

The following piece represents my opinion only. Please read my full disclaimer below. It’s tough timing bubbles bursting. Just ask any short seller or Austrian economist, including myself, who is constantly ridiculed for being a “broken clock” over and over until, of course, their thesis plays out…just never on the timetable that made it comfortable to hold.