Insider Newsletter: Issue #335

In this issue we cover trust erosion, offshore oil, tankers, energy stocks, and what credit default swaps are signaling about the US economy.

Greetings Fellow Legends.

This beauty from Bariloche, Argentina comes courtesy of Paola.

And from fellow member and pilot, Andrew, flying over Greenland.

Before we dive in, we recorded a video going through the topics covered in this issue. It’s right below the paywall.

For those of you reading this one for free, a quick word before you reach the gate.

The full Insider Newsletter sits below the paywall. Here is a taste of what is behind it this week.

The United States spent August propping up the Japanese yen. Buying it. And paying in euros, so as not to part with a single dollar of its own. Why would the mightiest currency on earth move heaven and earth to hold up somebody else’s? Because Japan is the largest foreign holder of US government debt, and that debt is now being held up by the elbows. We walk through the whole trap, and what it means for the one thing sitting under everyone’s feet, the sovereign bond market.

That is one piece of nine. There is the letter almost nobody read, in which a regulator quietly decided the bonds bankrolling the entire AI build-out need not obey the rules written after 2008. There is Terry Smith, the so-called English Warren Buffett, abandoning the one rule that made him, at what smells an awful lot like a top. And there is the credit market, staffed by the most boring people alive, beginning to price something the equity crowd is still far too busy dreaming to notice.

We also name the Big Five. Five deeply unloved ideas to go and research yourself, sitting in tankers, offshore oil, and one very large short.

It runs $420 for the year. Less than a decent lunch in the city, once a month, for the lot. And if it is not for you, no hard feelings at all, the free pieces keep landing regardless.

But this is the issue where we join the dots. And the picture they make is not a calm one.

In This Week’s Issue

• The Erosion of Trust

• Vetting

• Blowing the Bubble

• Terry Smith: Contrary Signs in Bending His Investment Strategy

• Situational Awareness: Not So Aware of the Situation

• We Have a Situation

• Buy an Index Fund and Join the Crowd

• The Cost of Insuring Against Default is Telling Us Something

• The US Started a War… and Shot Its Own Banker

• Offshore Oil Growth to Accelerate

• The Big Five: