TANGLED VENTURES P/L | Director | Treasurer | Lead R&D | https://xitter.cf/t.co/IHwpQMffsP The Macro Playbook | Trader | Crypto | Precious Metals | Commodities
Brisbane, Queensland
Joined February 2016
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TheMacroPlaybook (Chamberlain) | Team Tangled retweeted
My wife left me today. She said it was because I “never stop talking.” I said the yen carry trade is a $20 trillion leveraged bet that the Bank of Japan will never normalize rates and she said “I’m taking the dog.”
Let me explain to you what I was trying to explain to her.
For thirty years Japan ran rates at zero. Zero. Free money. So the entire planet borrowed yen for nothing and bought literally anything with yield. Treasuries, Mexican peso bonds, Nasdaq, your uncle’s crypto. That’s the carry trade. It’s not a strategy. It’s a short volatility position wearing a business casual outfit.
Then in August 2024 the BOJ raised rates 15 basis points. FIFTEEN. And the yen ripped, the Nikkei fell 12% in a day, and the VIX printed 65. That was the tremor. That was the trailer.
She said “you said this last year.” I said YES AND I WAS RIGHT, THE MARKET JUST FORGOT, and she started packing.
Japan’s debt-to-GDP is roughly 250%. The BOJ owns over half the JGB market. They are the market. There’s no price discovery, there’s a guy in Tokyo with a printer and a dream. Every basis point higher on the long end costs them real money on debt they can never actually repay in real terms. So what do you do when you can’t default and you can’t pay? You inflate. You always inflate. It’s the only tool that doesn’t require anyone to vote.
She said “our marriage counselor thinks you have anxiety.” I said your marriage counselor doesn’t know what the 30-year JGB is doing and she said “NOBODY KNOWS WHAT THE 30-YEAR JGB IS DOING, THAT’S THE POINT, PAUL.”
My name isn’t Paul. That’s how far gone we are.
Anyway I’ve got canned goods, a Kagoshima yield curve chart laminated above the bed, and nobody left to explain it to. So it’s you now. Buckle up.
TheMacroPlaybook (Chamberlain) | Team Tangled retweeted
The faster technology moves, the more I think about Bezos' question
What won't change in the next 10 years?
Things I've been writing down over time:
- Humans will always need shelter, food, energy, and healthcare.
- The desire for ownership and the accumulation of wealth.
- The physical world will move more slowly than the digital one.
- Every increase in technological capability, especially AI, will require more energy.
- People and businesses will continue to need access to capital.
- Capital will continue to seek returns that exceed inflation.
- Underwriting methods evolve, but demand for credit (loans) is persistent.
- Trust remains scarce and becomes increasingly valuable as content, code, and fraud become cheaper.
- Verified identities and reputation becomes more important as information becomes abundant and synthetic.
- Long-term wealth creation and dynastic (multi-generational) thinking predate modern technology, and will persist.
- Coordination and transaction costs never fully disappear; market friction will continue to justify the existence of firms and intermediaries.
- People will continue to compete for status.
- Consumers will pay a premium for products and services that confer status.
- Time remains fixed at 24 hours per day.
- But attention is a finite resource and an enduring constraint.
- Products that credibly save time (or enable delegation) have a perpetual market.
- Inaccessible, proprietary data will be a persistent moat. The more inaccessible and difficult to aggregate, the deeper the moat.
- People want accountability, recourse, and clearly identifiable responsibility when things go wrong.
- Regulation consistently lags technological innovation.
- Compliance requirements, licensing, and regulatory moats persist even when machines can perform the underlying task.
- Local knowledge remains valuable and difficult to replicate.
- Heterogeneous markets (like real estate) continue to reward people with deep contextual understanding.
- Incumbent organizations tend to underinvest in disrupting their own businesses, which always creates opportunities for challengers.
Bezos' insight on what wouldn't change in 10 years was "Customers will always want lower prices and faster delivery."
It's boring/ true, but I think that's the point.
Everything we build today can and will be rebuilt more cheaply, faster by someone else.
Build on the invariants, not the trends.
What have I missed?
TheMacroPlaybook (Chamberlain) | Team Tangled retweeted
The chances of a deer taking you out at a crosswalk are slim. But never zero.
TheMacroPlaybook (Chamberlain) | Team Tangled retweeted
$MSTR If price and time symmetry will be respected in the possible H&S bottom reversal, this is the max correction for the right shoulder. Breakout above the neckline will be the signal.
TheMacroPlaybook (Chamberlain) | Team Tangled retweeted
BREAKING: ALBANESE GRILLED ON TV OVER FUEL PRICES
TheMacroPlaybook (Chamberlain) | Team Tangled retweeted
Today ANZ's Consumer Confidence Index fell to its lowest level ever in more than 50 years of data.
There was commentary prior to the war that this was not representative of the experience of households, I vehemently disagreed.
The data from CBA tells the tale, even prior to the war real per capita spending was falling significantly.
And this had been happening for years.
Households have been absolutely bushwhacked by inflation and a poorly performing real economy.
Now the age of upheaval is upon us and things have worsened still.
Amidst this extremely challenging environment it is crazy not to cut migration into a huge economic shock, but if that is removed you are left with a consumer economy that was already contracting even before the war.
Reality is coming home to roost for Australia.
Chart: ANZ
TheMacroPlaybook (Chamberlain) | Team Tangled retweeted
🚨Warren Buffett: “I could end the deficit in five minutes. You just pass a law that says anytime there’s a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for reelection.”
IMAGINE THAT!!
TheMacroPlaybook (Chamberlain) | Team Tangled retweeted
Australia should be making this man Prime Minister.
TheMacroPlaybook (Chamberlain) | Team Tangled retweeted
Long-term #SILVER investors... This is the chart that you should be focusing on. 50 level was broken on the upside after decades. As long as it holds above that level, long-term investment/asset allocation theme is intact.
TheMacroPlaybook (Chamberlain) | Team Tangled retweeted
🇦🇺An Australian tech founder with zero biology background sequenced his dog’s tumor DNA, then used ChatGPT and AlphaFold to design a custom mRNA cancer vaccine.
A month later, the tumors shrank by half.
And this is just the start of AI medicine.